Copyright

by
David Marcus Lauderback
2004

The Dissertation Committee for David Marcus Lauderback

Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation:

The U.S. Army School of the Americas:

Mission and Policy during the Cold War

Committee:
__________________________________
Robert A. Divine, Supervisor
__________________________________
Michael B. Stoff, Co-Supervisor
__________________________________
Virginia Garrard Burnett
__________________________________
Mark A. Lawrence
__________________________________
H. W. Brands

The U.S. Army School of the Americas:

Mission and Policy during the Cold War

by
David Marcus Lauderback, A.B., M.A.

Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
the University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin

December 2004

Dedication

To Laura
You finally earned your Ph.T.

Acknowledgments

This project began with a suggestion: How about the School of the Americas?
The counterinsurgency and intelligence manuals that the U.S. Army had used for years to
train Latin American military students at Ft. Gulick and at Ft. Benning had just been
made public, prompting a spate of media coverage. One evening while watching the
news, my father-in-law, Joseph Di Pasquale, posed the query to me, the spouse of his
eldest daughter. I am sure he remarked in idle interest, wondering aloud about
prospective dissertation topics. I did not have to think very long. That fits, I replied. I
had been looking for an interpretative wedge with which to explore U.S.-Latin American
relations during the cold war, and the school seemed ideal. Thanks Joe. So off I went.
Along the way I have received continual support from all the usual suspects, as well as
the generous help of strangers.
Next, I must thank the librarians and archivists who made this effort possible.
The researcher is only as good as the archivist, is a maxim that ought to be emblazoned
in libraries and archives around the globe. I am indebted to many able professionals who
work the repositories from which I drew the story recounted here. Jorge and staff keep
the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin the finest

single repository of Latin American literature in the world. Mary Haynes, Andrew Birtle
and the excellent people at the Center for Military History introduced me to the world of
military history. Yamill Collazo and Lt. Col. Russell Ramsay (ret.) opened the doors at
the John B. Amos library at Ft. Benning and gave me free run of the copier. Wil
Mahoney, senior military archivist at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland,
not only helped me navigate the vast collection of the United States Army, he even
plumbed the depths of the vaults to find and declassify on the spot additional
materials pertaining specifically to the U.S. Army School of the Americas. The folks at
the Kennedy Library provided monies to help fund my research, and Will Johnson
personally selected boxes he knew I needed to examine. The staff in Abilene kept their
doors open extra just for me (and a few other intransigent graduate students, late one
Saturday afternoon my last in Kansas), giving me time to find the documents
connecting President Eisenhower to counterinsurgency training at Ft. Gulick. And Oscar
Osorio let me paw through his personal files on U.S. counterinsurgency policy in Central
America, which he continues to compile for his work at the National Security Archive at
Georgetown.
Good folks I met along the way took care of me in ways that I will never forget.
Bill and Mary Lammert opened their home to me, fed me, and when the good folks of
Enterprise, Kansas called wondering why I was out running in the late afternoon heat,
they explained that I was from California by way of Texas. The ladies at Popeyes across
the street from Ft. Benning made sure that an extra biscuit, a wing or a leg, some extra

vi

slaw or mashers always made its way into my Special #3. And, they directed me to the
best breakfast this white boy has ever eaten. Tan at General Tsos remained open late
every night for three weeks so I could stay at the Archives until closing and still get a
hot meal. And when the canteen at the Kennedy Library discovered how much I
enjoyed the chowder and corn beef, it became the special every day for two weeks.
Finally, the hard-working folks at the National Archives let me pull extra trucks and even
helped me copy the counterinsurgency manuals I found just hours before my flight was to
leave National.
My teachers have trained, inspired, and, when necessary, cajoled me as well.
Peter Cleaves, Henry Selby, Aline Helg, Susan Deans Smith, Jonathan Brown, and
Richard Graham never seemed to lose their bemused expression at the Americanist who
took Latin American history so seriously. Bob Olwell, Gunther Peck, and Kevin Kenny
pushed me to stretch my analytical muscles, and Dave Bowman, Sally Clarke, and
Howard Miller showed me more than a bit about teaching. Neil Heyman and Arthur
Schatz taught me look for a conclusion soundly rooted in the evidence rather than just an
idea that sounds good. Jess Stoddart never missed an opportunity to give me insight into
the life of the professional historian. And Brian Loveman, Ernst Griffin, Norris Clement,
and Thomas Davies, Jr., nurtured in me a desire to understand the historical basis of U.S.Latin American relations at a time when rhetoric was pandemic and comprehension rare.
My committee stood behind me during this entire project, offering the benefit of
their experience and showing great patience. Michael Stoff kept the wolves that doubted

vii

at bay when health and family issues slowed my progress; Mark Lawrence offered
camaraderie and insight; Ginny Burnett helped balance my perspective; Bill Brands
stepped in at the last minute; and Bob Divine stood by me longer than any of us ever
expected he would need to.
And Mary Helen Quinn and Marilyn Lehman ably worked the bureaucracy that is
The University of Texas at Austin.
Finally, my family has offered continual support and encouragement over the
years. To my father Delaney and his wife Engeltie Lauderback, thank you for your faith,
and for the lap top on which the dissertation found its voice; to my mother Stephanie
Riegel, you are right, writing generates its own momentum; to my brother and sister Don
and Justine who offered constant, if bewildered (why would you do this to yourself!),
affection, its done; to Joe, mon beau-frre: cest finis; to my brother- and sisters-inlaw Joe, Cathy, Ellen and Alicia, thank you for your encouragement and occasional
prodding; to my godchildren, Ashley, Jean, Tad, Alexis, Ichiro, Juliette, Ben, and John,
always pursue your dreams. And, a final note of gratitude to Dan Waldorf, who made
sure that I went to graduate school.
To everyone: thank you.
DML
August, 2004

viii

The U.S. Army School of the Americas:

Mission and Policy during the Cold War

Publication No. ________

David Marcus Lauderback, Ph.D.

The University of Texas at Austin, 2004

Supervisors: Robert A. Divine and Michael B. Stoff

The Cuban Revolution was the watershed of U.S.-Latin American relations in the
cold war and led a generation of policymakers to work assiduously to prevent its
recurrence. The U.S. Army School of the Americas became a small part of a systemic
effort by the United States to provide Latin America with the skills to enforce internal
security and stymie Communist subversion. The United States Army in 1939 had begun
a series of informal training sessions with Latin American soldiers and officers designed
to promote regional cooperation in the years leading to World War II. A decade later, the

ix

U.S. Army established a formal training center at Ft. Gulick at the eastern edge of the
zone and named it the U.S. Army Caribbean School. When the Kennedy administration
renamed the training facility at Ft. Gulick in 1963, the U.S. Army School of the Americas
had already served thousands of Latin American military for over two decades. Despite
the new name, however, the school quickly returned to its subordinate position in the
U.S. Armys training and doctrine command as subsequent presidents concentrated on
Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and the nuclear arms race. The unsavory legacy of U.S.
policy in Central America during the 1980s led critics in the 1990s to dub the facility,
now at Ft. Benning, Georgia, the School of Assassins and demand its closure. But the
school rarely played more than a tangential role in U.S. policy. Instead, the United States
preferred to use military missions and special forces teams to reinforce authoritarian rule
in Latin America. And administration after administration bolstered and even installed
dictatorships because they believed that only the regions military were capable of
maintaining order and protecting American interests. The literature of the period
explains U.S. policy as either the result of national security concerns or the product of
advancing economic imperialism. Examining the history of the U.S. Army School of the
Americas, however, reveals that the focus on the security/economics dynamic has
effectively obscured the legacy of American paternalism on United States foreign and
military relations with Latin America.

Table of Contents
Introduction Frederick Winslow Taylor, Antonio Gramsci, and Walt W. Rostow:
The Social Construction of Development and the U.S. Army
School of the Americas ............................................................................... 1
Literature Review........................................................................................ 4
The Hegemonic Project............................................................................. 28
The Linguistic Turn................................................................................... 51
Conclusion................................................................................................. 60
Chapter 1 Radios, Heavy Equipment, and Cream Puffs: United States Army
Training of Latin American Military, 1939-1958 ..................................... 64
Latin America, Japan, and the Canal, 1939-1943 ..................................... 69
Latin American Training in Panama, 1943-47.......................................... 77
U.S. Army Caribbean School.................................................................... 88
Training and Cooperation ....................................................................... 108
Chapter 2 Eisenhower and the P Factor: Psychological Warfare, Paternalism,
and U.S. Counterinsurgency Training in Latin America, 1959-1961 ..... 109
Internal Security Debate.......................................................................... 113
Damn Punks......................................................................................... 126
Countering Sino-Soviet Propaganda ....................................................... 139
Sprague Committee and Internal Security Training................................ 146
The Emergence of Counterinsurgency Policy......................................... 155
Chapter 3 Barbarians at the Gate: Kennedy Combats Communist
Subversion in the Western Hemisphere .................................................. 158
Readying for War .................................................................................... 162
The Tools of the Trade ............................................................................ 177
Internal Security ...................................................................................... 188
The Subversive Threat ............................................................................ 203
Conclusion............................................................................................... 216
Chapter 4 Whats in a Name?
The U.S. Army School of the Americas, 1959-1963 .............................. 221
Internal Security ...................................................................................... 225
Where Policy Meets Curricula ................................................................ 232
A School for the Americas ...................................................................... 246
The Most Dangerous Area................................................................... 258
Rhetoric and Reality................................................................................ 270
Chapter 5 Human Rights at the School of Assassins:
The U.S. Army School of the Americas, 1964-2001 .............................. 274
Back to the Bench ................................................................................... 277
Human Rights.......................................................................................... 288
The New Cold War ................................................................................. 296
The School of Assassins ...................................................................... 306

xi

Conclusion........................................................................................................... 313
Bibliography........................................................................................................ 323
List of References ................................................................................... 323
Secondary Works .................................................................................... 328
Vita ................................................................................................................. 345

xii

Introduction:
Frederick Winslow Taylor, Antonio Gramsci, and Walt W. Rostow:
The Social Construction of Development and
the U.S. Army School of the Americas
On July 1, 1963, John F. Kennedy renamed the inter-American military training
facility in Panama to reflect his desire to combat Communist subversion in the
hemisphere: the U.S. Army School of the Americas. The United States Army in 1939
had begun a series of informal training sessions with Latin American soldiers and officers
designed to promote regional cooperation in the years leading to World War II. A decade
later the U.S. Army established a formal training center at Ft. Gulick at the eastern edge
of the zone and named it the U.S. Army Caribbean School. The school worked during
the 1950s to create an identity as a facility for Latin American military, including a
switch in 1956 to instruction in Spanish. The army, however, preferred to employ its
missions to American embassies to train foreign nationals in the host country. The
Cuban Revolution would change the mission at the school because it soon raised the
specter of Communist subversion in the hemisphere, and successive administrations
worked assiduously to prevent its reoccurrence.

President Kennedy launched the

Alliance for Progress to induce economic development in the underdeveloped economies

of Latin America. When the Kennedy administration renamed the training facility at Ft.
Gulick, the U.S. Army School of the Americas had already served thousands of Latin
American military for over two decades. The school had become part of a broad program
1

designed to impart specialized counterinsurgency training to assist regional military in

maintaining internal security in their countries so that development could continue apace.
Despite the new name, however, the School of the Americas quickly returned to its
subordinate position in the U.S. Armys training and doctrine command as subsequent
presidents concentrated on Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and the nuclear arms race. This
changed during the first half of the 1980s when the Reagan administration catapulted the
school to the front lines of U.S. policy in Central America as the primary training facility
for the El Salvadoran Army. The unsavory legacy of that period led critics in the 1990s
to dub the facility, now at Ft. Benning, Georgia, the School of Assassins and demand
its closure. Now, with a new name once again, the Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation touts itself as a leading force for human rights and counternarcotics
training.
The U.S. Army School of the Americas provides a useful tool to examine United
States foreign and military policy toward Latin America after 1939.

American

intervention political, military, and economic has marked relations between the
United States and the nations of Latin America. The literature on U.S.-Latin American
relations during this period, and on the cold war in general, alternatively depicts
American policy as the result of advancing economic hegemony, or the product of
evolving security considerations within the context of the cold war. Those few historians
who have addressed U.S. training of Latin American military generally conclude that it
did indeed promote a new emphasis on counterinsurgency tactics to provide internal
political stability deemed essential for underdeveloped Latin American nations to develop
2

the economic and political preconditions necessary for democratic institutions to take
hold. Examining the School of the Americass evolving mission provides a unique
opportunity to explore the changing assumptions, tactics, and purpose of U.S. Latin
American policy during the cold war. Further, telling the history of the School in its
various incarnations since 1939 offers the chance to illuminate a much discussed but little
understood part of the role of the United States Army in American foreign relations. It
also affords the opportunity to address the impact of that training on Latin America.
The United States used military assistance and training to reinforce authoritarian
and military rule in Latin America. The Soviet Union, not Latin America, mattered to the
United States during the cold war. The contestation with the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics preoccupied the attention of successive presidents in the four and one-half
decades after World War II.

Asia required the concerted attention of several

administrations, but only on two occasions did Latin America warrant a measure of the
same concern: after the Cuban and Nicaraguan Revolutions. The United States did its
best to ignore Latin America as a rule and expected that the region would not distract the
worlds first nuclear power from pursuing the containment of international Communism.
To ensure that no disruptions occurred, presidents during the cold war chose to support
Latin American dictatorships in order to ensure order and stability. Administration after
administration with the qualified exception of Jimmy Carter reinforced that policy
through the Military Assistance Program. The U.S. armed forces provided the world with
materiel and training from the worlds most powerful military. Latin American military
eagerly accepted that aid, clamored for more, and embraced the training the United States
3

offered. When the Kennedy and Reagan administrations believed that popular uprisings
in Cuba and Nicaragua represented a Communist incursion into the Western Hemisphere,
and portended further subversion, the U.S. Army offered counterinsurgency training to
enhance the ability of the Latin American military to preserve internal security in their
own countries. The United States knew the long history of intervention by the Latin
American military into their domestic politics. But administration after administration
bolstered and even installed dictatorships because they believed that only the regions
military were capable of maintaining order and protecting American interests.

The

presidents of the cold war decided to privilege authoritarianism in Latin America because
the men who served in the Oval Office accepted the responsibility to procure markets for
United States business as well as preserve national security against Communism. But
they also shared Americas deeply embedded racial paternalism, which shaped the course
and content of U.S. policy toward Latin America.
LITERATURE REVIEW
United States policy toward Latin America has involved repeated military,
political, and economic intervention in the region. Critics of U.S. policy toward Latin
America believe the foundation for American intervention rests with the mistaken
conviction that the Monroe Doctrine has a positive legacy. The United States, they
contend, has relied on a discourse predicated on the assumption that intervention is in the
interest of all of the Americas. Further, successive presidential administrations have
never seriously examined the persistent sense of entitlement that has historically directed
policy toward the region. With an often high-handed paternalism, the United States took
4

over one-half of Mexicos territory in 1848 and periodically dallied with adding
Caribbean countries as states during the nineteenth century. The United States capped off
the century by sending troops to free the Cubans from the clutches of Spanish brutality
in that splendid little war in 1898. Congress pushed through the Teller (1898) and Platt
(1903) Amendments which kept Cuba out of the United States but properly subordinate
by law to congressional mandate, leaving Cubans only a semblance of autonomy until
1933. The United States also intervened militarily and occupied several nations in the
Caribbean and Central America in the first decades of the twentieth century. But first
Herbert Hoover and then, more definitively, Franklin D. Roosevelt rejected military
intervention and occupation and sought the good will of the nations of Latin America, the
latter in an effort to forestall German and British economic and political influence in the
region and promote American trade. Concern for national security shaped policy during
World War II and the cold war that followed. Following the war and into the 1950s, and
again in the 1970s, the United States simply sought to maintain a status quo in which it
enjoyed the generally staunch support of authoritarian leaders in the region, and
American investment benefited from salutary political relations.

As in the 1920s,

American investment bankers in the 1970s pursued Latin American markets with a
vengeance and captured the lions share of the investment capital markets. The ebb and
flow of security, then economic, then security concerns, has fostered the perception that
American intervention has been directed, alternatively, by these forces. But rather than

acting as contending imperatives, economic and security considerations have reinforced

each other in shaping American foreign policy.1

Eldon Kenworthy, America/Amricas: Myth in the Making of U.S. Policy toward Latin America
(University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 1-12; and Salvador de Madariaga, Latin
America between the Eagle and the Bear (New York: Praeger, 1962), 74, chastise the United States for the
presumed beneficent legacy of the Monroe doctrine. On the making of the Monroe Doctrine, see Ernest R.
May, The Making of the Monroe Doctrine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975); Samuel Flagg
Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Diplomacy (New York: Knopf, 1949);
Dexter Perkins, The Monroe Doctrine, 1823-1826 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1937);
and Bradford Perkins, Castlereagh and Adams (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964). See
Kenworthy, America/Amricas; Clara Nieto, Masters of War: Latin America and U.S. Aggression from the
Cuban Revolution through the Clinton Years (New York: Seven Stories, 2003); and Arturo Escobar,
Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995), on the discourse of development. For the Mexican War see Jack K. Bauer, The
Mexican War, 1846-1848, intro. Robert W. Johnson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1974);
Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1990); Thomas R. Heitala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in
Late Jacksonian America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); and David M. Pletcher, The Diplomacy
of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973). For
nineteenth-century U.S.-Caribbean expansion, see David M. Pletcher, The Awkward Years: American
Foreign Policy under Garfield and Arthur (Colombia: University of Missouri Press, 1962); idem, The
Diplomacy of Trade and Investment: American Investment in the Hemisphere, 1865-1900 (Colombia:
University Press, 1998); Philip S. Foner, A History of Cuba and Its Relations with the United States vol. I,
1492-1845: From the Conquest of Cuba to La Escalera (New York: International, 1962); Walter LaFeber,
The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1963); Robert E. May, The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854-1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1973); and Josef Opatrny, United States Expansionism and Cuban Annexationism in
the 1850s (Prague: Charles University, 1990). Discussion of the U.S. role in Cuba in 1898 begins with H.
Wayne Morgan, Americas Road to Empire: The War with Spain and Overseas Expansion (New York:
Wiley, 1965); Philip S. Foner, Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism,
1895-1898, 2 vols. (New York: Monthly Review, 1972); Julio Le Riverend, La repblica: dependencia y
revolucin, 4th ed. rev. (Havana: Instituto Cubano Libro, 1975); Jos M. Hernndez, Cuba and the United
States: Intervention and Militarism, 1868-1933 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); John L. Offner,
An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the United States and Spain Over Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1992); and Aline Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality,
1886-1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). For U.S. intervention in the Caribbean
and Central America, see Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American
Power (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 129-252; Lester Langley, The Banana Wars: United States
Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898-1934 (Chicago: The Dorsey Press, 1983); Thomas Schoonover, The
United States in Central America, 1860-1911: Episodes of Imperialism and Imperial Rivalry in the World
System (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991); Richard H. Collin, Theodore Roosevelts Caribbean: The
Panama Canal, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Latin American Context (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1988); and David Healy, Driven to Hegemony: The United States in the Caribbean, 18891917 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, Press, 1988). For specific cases see Hans Schmidt, The United
States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934, foreword Stephen Solarz (New Brunzwick: Rutgers University
Press, 1995). [1971]; Brenda Gayle Plummer, Haiti and the Great Power, 1902-1915 (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1992); and Neil Macaulay, The Sandino Affair (Chicago: Quadrangle,

The intersection of economic and security concerns shaped American foreign

policy most strongly during the cold war. The United States emerged from World War II
as the worlds preeminent economic and military power. The emerging cold war with the
Soviet Union dominated the concerns of policymakers, profoundly interacted with
domestic life, and reinforced the nations diplomatic and economic east-west orientation.
A strategy of global containment of Communism and the Soviet Union came to direct
U.S. foreign policy. The United States in the years after World War II concentrated on a
divided Europe. The Marshall Plan represents a classic example of the intersection of
economic and security concerns, as the United States worked to deny further Communist
political gains in Europe by promoting the faltering economies of pro-western nations. In
doing so, the Marshall Plan secured the crucial markets of Europe for the United States.
Marshall, however, abruptly told Latin Americans in 1948 that, despite their sacrifices
during the war (Latin America had provided the United States critical raw materials at
below-market prices), the trade package the region believed the United States had
promised would not be forthcoming. Instead, the United States pushed a mutual security
alliance for the hemisphere. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower limited Latin Americas

1967); Robert E. Quirk, An Affair of Honor: Woodrow Wilson and the Occupation of Veracruz (New
York: Norton, 1962); and Frederich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the
Mexican Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). Combined, Jonathan Brown, Oil and
Revolution in Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); and Linda B. Hall, Oil, Banks, and
Politics: The United States and Postrevolutionary Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995),
provide a thorough accounting of the United States, oil barons, and the Mexican Revolution. Frank D.
McCann, Jr., The Brazilian-American Alliance, 1937-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973),
traces the growing concern for German economic ties to South America. For the 1970s private investment
explosion, see Barbara Stallings, Banker to the World: U.S. Portfolio Investment in Latin America 19001986 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

responsibilities to maintaining political stability and hemispheric defense. In practice, the

hemispheric defense policy of the 1940s and 1950s meant U.S. control of the Panama
Canal and the shipping lanes of the Caribbean; stability meant political order and no hint
of Communism in Latin American governments. When the socialist regime of nationalist
Jacabo Arbenz threatened U.S. interests in Guatemala, President Eisenhower moved
swiftly, if clandestinely, to oust him. American policymakers relegated Latin America to
a comfortably secure backwater, one of some strategic importance, but not the primary
battlefield in the war against Communism. It was not until Vice President Richard
Nixons ill-fated trip to South America in 1958 that President Eisenhower began to
reconsider Americas unswerving support for virulently anti-Communist authoritarian
regimes. But it was the Cuban Revolution that refocused the attention of policymakers
on Latin America.2

See John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American
National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pushes the articulation of
containment over time. See also William Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Cleveland:
World Publication, 1959); Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1992, 7th ed. (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1993); Robert A. Divine, Since 1945: Politics and Diplomacy in Recent American
History, 3d ed. (New York: Knopf, 1985); Stephen Ambrose, The Rise to Globalism: American Foreign
Policy since 1938, 6th ed. (New York: Penguin, 1991); and Peter G. Boyle, American-Soviet Relations:
From the Russin Revolution to the Fall of Communism (London: Routlidge, 1993), for American foreign
policy in the cold war. For the origins of the cold war see Norman Graebner, Cold War Diplomacy, 19451960 (New York: Anvil, 1962); Thomas G. Paterson, On Every Front: The Making of the Cold War (New
York: Norton, 1979); Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War (New York: Penguin,
1990), [1979]; John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (New York:
Columbia University Pres, 1972); Lloyd Gardner, Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American
Foreign Policy, 1941-1949 (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970); Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power:
National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1991); and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Stalins Cold War: Soviet Strategies in Europe, 1943 to 1956 (New
York: Manchester University Press, 1995). See John Gimbel, Origins of the Marshall Plan (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1976); Michael J. Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the
Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); and David
Lauderback, The War Scare of March 1948:Domestic Considerations and Popular Perceptions of the Soviet
Threat, Masters Report, University of Texas at Austin, 1996, for the intersection of domestic and foreign

The Cuban Revolution proved to be the watershed of U.S.-Latin American

relations in the cold war. Cuba became the focal point of world attention as the United
States and the Soviet Union played a dangerous game of brinkmanship during the Cuban
Missile Crisis of October 1962. But Cuban subversion represented the most persistent
threat to the United States. Americas initial uncertainty about the ramifications of Fidel
Castros revolt against the U.S.-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista, gave way by mid1960 to a conviction that Castro must go. The newly-elected President Kennedy carried
through with an ill-conceived effort to oust Castro with the invasion of Cuba at the Bay
of Pigs that same year. The failure of the attack proved that the United States must
contain Communism in the Western Hemisphere. Kennedy declared that the Cuban
Revolution represented a challenge that could not be ignored, and he launched an
ambitious but ill-fated aid program for Latin America designed to promote economic
development and prevent further Communist subversion.

However short-lived, the

Alliance for Progress included a critical and lasting new component for U.S. foreign and
military policy counterinsurgency training. Even though the Vietnam War quickly
removed Latin America from major consideration for policymakers, for the next two

policy and the making of the Economic Recovery Plan. David Green, The Containment of Latin America:
A History of the Myths and Realities of the Good Neighbor Policy (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971);
and Frederico Gil, Latin American-United States Relations (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1971), examine
the United States emerging Latin American policy during the early cold war. For the range of
interpretations on U.S. intervention in Guatemala in 1954, see Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in
Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982); Stephen
Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (New
York: Anchor, 1983), [1982]; Peiro Glejeises, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United
States, 1944-1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); and Ronald Schneider, Communism in
Guatemala (New York: Octagon, 1979).

decades the United States concentrated on providing the Latin American military with
military assistance and training necessary to ensure internal security in their countries.
The

Latin

American

armed

services

eagerly

embraced

the

aid,

employed

counterinsurgency training, and launched a series of long-lasting and brutal military

regimes. The Nicaraguan revolution of 1979 became the next watershed for U.S.-Latin
American relations. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, this ardent cold warrior
invigorated the cold war with new fervor for anti-Communism and waged a concerted
campaign to topple this latest Communist threat with renewed counterinsurgency aid and
training for Central America.

The toppling of the Berlin Wall in 1989, however,

effectively ended the cold war, and U.S.-Latin American relations have entered a new era
that is increasingly reminiscent of the Good Neighbor Policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt.3

See Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story (New York: Touchstone, 1979); and Trumbull
Higgins, The Perfect Failure: Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the CIA at the Bay of Pigs (New York: Norton,
1989). For the Cuban Missile Crisis, start with Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days (New York: Norton,
1971); Elie Abel, The Missile Crisis (Philadelphia 1966); Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision:
Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Brown & Little, 1971); Ronald R. Pope, ed., Soviet Views on
the Cuban Missile Crisis: Myth and Reality in Foreign Policy Analysis (Washington: University Press of
America, 1982); Robert A. Divine, ed., The Cuban Missile Crisis, 2d ed. (New York: M. Weiner, 1988);
John C. Ausland, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Berlin-Cuba Crisis, 1961-1964 (Oslo: Scandinavian
University Press, 1996); and Mark J, White, The Cuban Missile Crisis (London: MacMillan, 1996). For the
American response to the Cuban revolution, see Richard Welch, Response to Revolution: The United
States and the Cuban Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985); Jules R.
Benjamin, The United States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution: An Empire of Liberty in an Age of
National Liberation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Robert E. Quirk, Fidel Castro (New
York: Norton, 1993); and Thomas G. Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of
the Cuban Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). On the Cuban revolution, see Hugh
Thomas, The Cuban Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1977); Ramn Eduardo Ruz, Cuba: The
Making of a Revolution (New York: Norton, 1968); Marifeli Prez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins,
Course, and Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). On U.S.-Cuban relations since 1959, see
Morris H. Morley, Imperial State and Revolution: The United States and Cuba, 1952-1986 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987); Louis A. Perz, Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy,
1952-1986 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990); and Wayne S. Smith, The Closest of Enemies: A
Personal and Diplomatic Account of U.S.-Cuban Relations since 1957 (New York: Norton, 1987). For the
Alliance for Progress, see William D. Rogers, The Twilight Struggle: The Alliance for Progress and the

10

Making sense of the U.S. Army School of the Americas in this history is
hampered by the limited attention it has received in the historical literature. Students of
U.S.-Latin American relations have argued back and forth for decades, contending either
that U.S. policy toward Latin America reflects the legitimate security concerns of the
nation or, instead, that it represents the outgrowth of American economic imperialism.
The debate still resonates with the seminal 1943 work of Samuel Flagg Bemis. Bemis
forcefully denied that a charge of economic imperialism could be applied to the United
States despite the dominating influence of American commercial interests in certain Latin
American industries. Bemis was more than a bit disingenuous when he argued that the
United States had not used its power to enforce those discrepancies, but he correctly
noted that the governments of the region themselves permitted and even encouraged
American investment. Bemis could not restrain his overt nationalism, however, when he
concluded that the expansion of U.S. interests in the hemisphere represented the natural
outgrowth of the continental expansion that had marked the American experience, and
that it represented the natural rise of the United States as a world leader. Since then,

Politics of Development in Latin America (New York: Random House, 1967); and Jerome I. Levinson and
Juan de Onis, The Alliance that Lost Its Way: A Critical Report on the Alliance for Progress (Chicago:
Quadrangle Books, 1970). John A. Booth, The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution
(Boulder: Westview, 1982); Nicaragua, in Ch Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, eds. Brian Loveman and
Thomas M. Davies, Jr. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 351-390; Walter LaFeber, Inevitable
Revolutions: The United States in Central America, 2d rev. ed. (New York: Norton, 1992), 225-241; and
John H. Coatsworth, Central America and the United States: The Clients and the Colossus (New York:
Twayne, 1994), 137-146, trace war and U.S. policy in Central America in the late 1970s and into the 1980s.
For Ronald Reagan, the new cold war, and Central America, see Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and
Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982); Marvin E.
Gettleman. et al., eds., El Salvador in the New Cold War (New York: Grove Press, 1981); James
Dunkerley, The Long War: Dictatorship and Revolution in El Salvador (London: Junction, 1982); LaFeber,
Inevitable Revolution, 242-338; and Coatsworth, Central America and the United States, 163-206.

11

historians have sallied back and forth, with some explaining U.S.-Latin American policy
as merely the extension of American economic hegemony while others have argued that
perceived security threats in the midst of the cold war dominated those policy
considerations. The debate over the Good Neighbor Policy, for example, has flowed
between the two poles, with Gardner, Green, and Gellman highlighting the active part
played by the United States government in procuring markets for American economic
interests, and Hagelund, Wood, and DeConde stressing the strategic necessity of securing
the regions goodwill after decades of American intervention.4
Some recent works have openly sought to move beyond the imperialism/security
dichotomy. But the debate still permeates these works. Authors who implicitly or
explicitly side with the exigencies of security as the foundation of U.S. policy toward the
region have tended to focus on the activities of businessmen in Latin America.
Holdovers for economic imperialism tend to focus now on capital flows as the vector for

Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Latin American Policy of the United States (New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1943). Edwin Lieuwen, U.S. Policy in Latin America: A Short History (New York: Praeger, 1965);
Gil, Latin American-United States; Cole Blasier, Hovering Giant: U.S. Responses to Revolutionary Change
in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976); and Lars Schoultz, National Security
and United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987) blame U.S.
economic imperialism. Dana Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1964); Gordon Connell-Smith, The Inter-American System (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1966); Manuel Espinoza, Inter-American Beginnings of U.S. Cultural Diplomacy
(Washington: U.S. State Department, 1976); Abraham F. Lowenthal, Partners in Conflict: The United
States and Latin America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); and Gaddis Smith, The
Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine (New York: Hill & Wang, 1994), cite security, and not always
uncritically. For the Good Neighbor Policy debate, see Lloyd C. Gardner, Economic Aspects of New Deal
Diplomacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964); Green, Containment of Latin America; Irwin
F. Gellman, Good Neighbor Diplomacy: United States Policies in Latin America, 1933-1945 (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979); David F. Haglund, Latin America and the Transformation of
U.S. Strategic Thought, 1936-1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984); Bryce Wood,
The Making of the Good Neighbor Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961); and Alexander
Deconde, Herbert Hoovers Latin American Policy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951).

12

economic intervention. Mark Gilderhaus ruminates that U.S.-Latin American relations

must be seen in their international context, as a historical process of reciprocal
interactions. Lester Langley chastises the persistent and wholly unrealistic idealism of
Latin Americans in the face of the unwavering, but no less self-congratulatory and selfdeceiving, realism of the United States.

Langley and Gilderhaus do not ignore

economic consideration or the asymmetrical power relationship that exists between the
United States and the nations of the region; they just do not choose to privilege political
and economic imperialism in their analysis. Peter Smith and Lars Schoulz, on the other
hand, still do. But they are looking to find a more complete explanation for the hows and
whys of American economic predominance. Smith blames the routine United States
support of dictatorships on American efforts to expand its dominance of the world
system. Lars Schoulz, an outspoken critic of U.S. policy for decades, bluntly doubts the
United States can ever overcome the innate paternalism that he believes has dominated
every aspect of its relations with Latin America for generations. Ft. Gulick plays a
tangential role at best in these works. Langley and Gilderhaus do not rate the School of
the Americas or counterinsurgency training a mention, but they do criticize the practice
of U.S. policy that buttressed repression in the region. Smith and Schoulz, on the other
hand, view Ft. Gulick as a coercive instrument, albeit a minor one, designed by the
United States to prop up dictatorships. In turn, those authoritarian regimes kept their

13

markets and resources available predominantly for the United States.

Security and

economics still continue to direct the historiography.5

The stability versus economics debate definitely shapes the literature on the
region most directly affected by U.S. military policy over time:

Central America.

Thomas Leonard provides some useful snippets of the Central American context as he
traces the major events in U.S.-Central American diplomatic history within the
framework of The Search for Stability. John Coatsworth offers a much more critical look
at how the United States has used its overweening military and economic power to
perpetuate the client status of the Central American nations in order to ensure security
and the regions dependence on the U.S. economy.

Both rate Kennedys

counterinsurgency training a brief mention but do not mention the School of the
Americas as they concentrate on the political dynamics of U.S.-Central American
relations. James Dunkerley, a long-time socialist critic of U.S. policy in El Salvador and
Bolivia, wrote a series of books in the 1980s on the dizzying array of leftist movements
that emerged in those countries. He characterized the violent political opposition to

Paul Dosal, Doing Business with Dictators: A Political History of United Fruit in Guatemala,
1899-1944 (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1993); and Thomas F. OBrien, The Century of U.S.
Capitalism in Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), are generally held up
as examples of the new business history. See Paul W. Drake, The Money Doctor in the Andes: The
Kemmerer Missions, 1923-1933 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989); and Stallings, Banker to the
World, on capital flows and investment in Latin America. Mark T. Gilderhaus, The Second Century: U.S.Latin American Relations since 1889 (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2000); Lester Langley, The
United States and Latin America in the Twentieth Century, 4th ed. (Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1989); Peter H. Smith, Talons of the Eagle: Dynamics of U.S. Latin American Relations (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997); and Lars Schultz, Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy
toward Latin America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). See also idem, Human Rights and
United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

14

oligarchies as the inevitable outcome of an exploited working class.

Power in the

Isthmus combines his thoughts of a decade and touches, at times, on how the United
States has exploited the glaring power inequalities in Central America to preserve its
economic dominance of the region. Walter LaFeber makes his case more explicitly. He
contends that the United States has consciously sought to maintain economic
predominance in Central America. To do so, American policymakers have allied with a
continuous series of brutal dictatorships that have themselves persistently thwarted the
aspirations of the regions peoples in their own quest to perpetuate generations-old
inequalities. The result, LaFeber argues, is a pattern of government abuse that leads to
revolt by the poorer segments of the population that repression and U.S. support of the
oppressors cannot stop. Both Dunkerley and LaFeber blame U.S. military aid for
helping to perpetuate the existing power and economic inequalities, but American
counterinsurgency policy does not play a major role in their stories and the School of the
Americas receives only a bare mention in the latter work. United States military policy
also gets blamed for the growth of dictatorships throughout Central America in the late
1960s and early 1970s in Don Etchisons 1975 work. While Etchison does not give
particular attention to the School of the Americas, he does note the differential experience
of U.S. military policy on the nations of Latin America.6

Thomas M. Leonard, Central America and the United States: The Search for Stability (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1991), 151; and Coatsworth, Central America and the United States, 105-6.
See for example James Dunkerley, Unity and Struggle: Trade Unions in Latin America (London: Latin
American Bureau, 1980); idem, Rebellion in the Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia, 1952-1882 (London:
Verso, 1984); idem, Political Transition and Economic Stabilization in Bolivia, 1982-89 (London: Institute
for Latin American Studies, 1990); and idem, Power in the Isthmus: A Political History of Modern Central

15

Four Central American countries received acute attention by the U.S. Army
during the cold war: Nicaragua, Panama, Guatemala, and El Salvador. The United States
created the Nicaraguan National Guard during the U.S. marine occupation of the country
between 1926-1933, and Anastasio Somoza used his position as its chief to take control
of Nicaragua when the United States pulled out. While historians have well established
the close ties between the United States military and the Somoza family that ruled
Nicaragua from 1933-1979, none examines the role of the School of the Americas.
While the U.S. armed services had three different military training facilities in the
Panama Canal Zone during the cold war Ft. Allbrook provided Latin American Air
Force training, Ft. Amador hosted the Inter-American Police Academy, and Ft. Gulick
housed the U.S. Army Caribbean School studies of Panama focus on the battle with the
United States over control of the canal. In her analysis of the U.S. invasion of Panama in
1989, Margaret Scranton only mentions the U.S. Army School of the Americas as the
origin of the relationship between the United States and the ousted President Manuel
Noriega. Guatemala has felt the significant impact of U.S. military training and aid.
Caesar D. Sereseres tied U.S. Military Assistance Program Aid with growing military
rule in Guatemala in the 1960s. Sheryl Shirley updated that account in her 1997 effort,
which revealed that U.S. security policy had the unintended consequence of exacerbating
divisions within the Guatemalan military. But she, too, argued that counterinsurgency

America (London: Verso, 1988). Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 2d rev. ed. (New York: Norton,
1993); and Don L. Etchison, The United States and Militarism in Central America (New York: Praeger,
1975).

16

and intelligence training enabled the Guatemalan military to more effectively suppress
dissent. U.S. policy in Guatemala in the 1980s has also come under fire. Miller and
Seeman provided details of the range of U.S. security aid, while Michael McClintock
blasted the consequences of U.S. Army and Drug Enforcement Administration aid.
McClintock explicitly connects American aid to patterns of increased repression by the
Guatemalan military, which in turn served as the catalyst for a vicious civil war
overshadowed by the Reagan administrations obsession with El Salvador. The civil war
in El Salvador spawned a veritable host of works attacking the Reagan administrations
anti-Communist policy and military assistance to the Salvadoran Army in the 1980s.
William LeoGrande provides perhaps the best account of the formation of U.S. policy
and its intersection in Central America. The role of the School of the Americas, however,
never receives more than tangential mention in these works. They reference only the
Kennedy administration and the assumption of counterinsurgency policy.7

Macaulay, Sandino Affair remains the best single volume on the U.S. occupation, while Boot,
Savage Wars of Peace, places U.S. intervention in historical perspective. Knut Walter, The Regime of
Anastasio Somoza, 1936-1956 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993) explores the
political gamesmanship of the founding Somoza and his ability to play off contending forces inside his
country; Paul Coe Clark, Jr, The United States and Somoza, 1933-1956: A Revisionist Look (New York:
Praeger, 1992), reveals Somozas political acumen in reading the ebb and flow of U.S. policy to his best
advantage; and Booth, End and the Beginning, offers a thorough accounting of the proximate causes of the
1979 overthrow of the Somoza dynasty. David McCullogh, The Path Between the Seas (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1977), remains the most comprehensive study of the building of the Canal. See Michael L.
Conniff, Panama and the United States: The Forced Alliance (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992);
Walter LaFeber, The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective, updated ed. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989). And see the bibliographical essays in Conniff, Panama and the United States, 1936; and LaFeber, Panama Canal, 249-57. Margaret Scranton, The Noriega Years (Boulder: Westview,
1991), takes Panama up to the 1989 U.S. invasion; Caesar D. Sereseres, Military Development and the
United States Military Assistance Program for Latin America: The Case of Guatemala, 1961-1969, 263
leaves, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Riverside, 1971 (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms,
1972,), OCLC: 13906998, Microfilm; Sheryl Lynn Shirley, The Impact of United States Security
Assistance on Democracy in Latin America: The Case of Guatemala during the 1960s, Ph.D. Dissertation,

17

The School of the Americas does not figure into the literature on Cuba even
though the Cuban Revolution plays a catalytic role in U.S.-Latin American relations.
Cuban historiography is dominated by two dates: 1895 and 1959. In 1895, Jos Mart
launched what would become the final stage of a decades-long independence process.
That date is generally seen as but the precursor to the true liberation of the island with
Fidel Castros 1959 overthrow of the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Gerald Poyo, Ada
Ferrer and Aline Helg, however, demonstrate the necessity of viewing the independence
process as part of a long emancipation movement. The white landed elites who sided
with independence and the United States against Spain used their access to the United
States military to stifle the black majority in the years after the Spanish-American War.
Jos Martinez-Hernandez traces how the United States military built Cubas fitful armed
forces under the Platt Protectorate. In 1933, not unlike Anastasio Somoza, Batista used
his countrys armed forces to place himself in power in 1933. Unlike Somoza, however,
Batista had been a sergeant. Most of the literature on U.S.-Cuban relations focuses on the

University of Texas, 1997, AAT 9803024 http://80-wwwlib.umi.com.content.lib.utexas.edu:2048/cr/

utexas/fullcit?p9803024; Michael McClintock, The American Connection (London: Zed, 1985); and Delia
Miller and Roland Seeman, with Cynthia Arnson, Background Information on Guatemala, the Armed
Forces and U.S. Military Assistance (Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1981), examine the
evolution of U.S. counterinsurgency training and its attendant effects in Guatemala. Gettleman, et al., eds.,
El Salvador, have compiled a thorough survey of published documents that frames U.S. policy toward the
violence in El Salvador up to 1981. For a look at the socio-economic roots of resistance in El Salvador, see
Liisa North, Bitter Grounds: Roots of Revolt in El Salvador 2d ed. (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1989);
Dunkerly, Long War, provides a sympathetic and detailed look at the politics of the rebellion, while
Michael T. Klare and Cynthia Arnson, Supplying Repression: U.S. Support of Authoritarian Regimes
Abroad, foreword Richard Falk (Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1981), place El Salvador within
the context of the Military Assistance Program. See also Brian Loveman, For La Patria: Politics and the
Armed Forces in Latin America (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1999), 192-202, for discussion of
military rule. And William LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America,
1977-1992 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

18

Cuban Revolution, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of
1962. United States opposition to Cuba generally gets explained, once again, as either
the product of American anti-Communism or advancing hegemony. Perz and Benjamin
fall into the latter category with rather celebratory and deterministic efforts. Stephen
Rabe argues that President Eisenhower prefigured the Alliance for Progress by calling for
concerted American economic aid to Latin America to offset the social strains produced
by dire poverty in the region. Thomas Paterson traces the evolution of the American
response to Castro going back to 1956, and Robert Quirk shows the popularity of the
figure of Fidel within and outside of Cuba. Like Rabe, these two authors focus on
American anti-Communism and national security threats to explain U.S. policy. Morris
Morely, on the other hand, offers a sophisticated yet ultimately reductionist account when
he characterizes the United States antagonistic relationship to Cuba following the
revolution as but the inevitable actions of an imperial State, one which serves the needs
of the American ruling class by using the state apparatus to secure political and economic
hegemony in this most vital island.8

On the events and themes leading up to 1895, see Rosalie Schwartz, Lawless Liberators: Political
Banditry and Cuban Independence (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989); Philip S. Foner, SpanishCuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, 1895-1898, vol. 1 (New York: Monthly
Review, 1972); Robert L. Paquette, Sugar Is Made of Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the
Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988);
Rebecca J. Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860-1899 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1985); and Louis A. Prez, Jr., Lords of the Mountain: Social Banditry and
Peasant Protest in Cuba, 1878-1918 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989). Prez first used
Hobsbawm's thesis in Louis A. Prez, Jr., Vagrants, Beggars, and Bandits: Social Origins of Cuban
Separatism, 1878-1895, American Historical Review vol. 90 no. 5 (Dec. 1985), 1092-1121. See E. J.
Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (New York: Norton, 1965), [1959]; and idem, Bandits (New York: Dell,
1971), [1969], for explication of the model of social conditions that produce social bandits. And see
Benjamin, United States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution; and Louis A. Prez, Jr., Cuba: Between
Reform and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), for the triumphal view of 1959.

19

The Cuban Revolution also had a profound impact on the armed forces of the rest
of Latin America. In the early 1960s, two authors in particular set the range of debate
over the enduring power of the regions military in domestic politics with rather different
views. Edwin Lieuwen attacked the U.S. policy of the decade for reinforcing the power
of the regions military, institutions that have a long history of political intervention
throughout Latin America. He criticized the United States for overreacting to the Cuban
Revolution and warned that counterinsurgency training would only seat the entrenched
military even deeper into their nations politics. John Johnson also traces the history of
the Latin American military as an institution. Johnson draws on the case of Brazil prior
to 1964 to argue that the military institutions of the region represent an untapped and
potentially powerful force for democratization.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s,

another wave of authoritarian regimes had swept through Latin America, leading a
number of authors to examine how the military and economic elites negotiated position
and power after military coups occurred in country after country. Political scientists in
particular sought to explain how the authoritarian state in Latin America was forced to

Gerald E. Poyo, With All and for the Good of All: The Emergence of Popular Nationalism in the Cuban
Communities of the United States, 1848-1898 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989); Ada Ferrer, Social
Aspects of Cuban Nationalism: Race, Slavery, and the Guerra Chiquita, 1879-1880, Cuban Studies vol. 21
(1990), 37-56; and Helg, Our Rightful Share; Hernndez, Cuba and the United States; Stephen G. Rabe,
Eisenhower and the Cold War: The Foreign Policy of Anti-Communism (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press); Paterson, Contesting Castro; Quirk, Fidel Castro; and Morley, Imperial State and
Revolution.

20

accommodate military participation in every aspect of governance, including mundane

matters that military regimes prior to the 1960s had disdained.9
Most students of Latin American politics blamed counterinsurgency training for
the persistence of military rule in Latin America in the 1980s and even the 1990s. Brian
Loveman brings together nearly four decades of literature to trace the Latin American
armed forces evolving sense of mission during the twentieth century.

Like Nunn,

Lieuwen, and many others, and including the work he and Thomas Davies began two
decades earlier, Loveman details how U.S. counterinsurgency training did stimulate the
regions militaries in the 1960s to a new conviction of preeminence in shaping the
economic and political future of their underdeveloped states. To be sure, the Latin
American military drew on their own deeply rooted sense of importance and the
conviction that they alone could defend their fatherland from the threat of Communist
subversion. But the United States planted and nurtured that conviction with military aid
and counterinsurgency training that enabled authoritarian governments to maintain
internal security for nearly three decades after the Cuban Revolution. United States
policy in the 1970s and 1980s had the unintended consequence of laying the groundwork

Edwin Lieuwen, Arms and Politics in Latin America, rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1961); and
John J. Johnson, The Military and Society in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964).
For authoritarianism and Latin American politics, see Edward Feit, The Armed Bureaucrats: Military
Administration Regimes and Political Development (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973); David Collier, The
New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); Guillermo
ODonnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Transition from Authoritarian Rule:
Latin America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Franca Elena Daz Cardona,
Fuerzas armadas, militarismo y constitucin nacional en Amrica latina (Mexico: UNAM, 1988); and
Alfred Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1988).

21

for the end of this latest round of military rule in Latin America. Karen Remmer and
Patricio Silva show how Latin American military tried to employ the economic models of
Milton Friedman and the Chicago School. The United States insisted as a part of
continuing development programs that Latin American nations adopt market reforms
directed by U.S. government officials. More than anything else, Remmer argues, the
failure of the economic programs of every single military regime led to a fitful
democratization process that began in the late 1980s in Latin America. Erik Hjonnerod
notes that many of the regions military, still smarting from their economic fiascos, were
reluctant to participate in the latest United States crusade against narcotraficantes.
Colombia has been one of the few countries to embrace the new policy, but they still
need counterinsurgency aid. Of course, as Paul Gootenberg and Gary Webb detail, more
than a few military men of all ranks took advantage of their countries growth industry.
Collectively, these works demonstrate the dramatic and disproportionate impact of U.S.
military training, of which the School of the Americas was a relatively small part, on the
Latin American military and the militarys decision to personally direct their nations
politics again and again in the three decades after the Cuban Revolution.10

10

Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies, Jr., eds., The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military in
Latin America, 2d rev. ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 308-14; Loveman, La Patria,
160-192, especially 189-191; Frederick Nunn, The Time of the Generals: Latin American Professional
Militarism in World Perspective (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992); Edward Lieuwen, Generals
vs. Presidents: Neo-Militarism in Latin America (New York: Praeger, 1964); and Lieuwen, Arms and
Politics, 122-53, 229-44. See also Begnt Abrahamsson, Military Professionalization and Political Power
(Beverly Hills: Sage, 1972); Victor Alba, El militarismo (Mexico: UNAM, 1960); Jan Knippers Black,
Sentinels of Empire: The United States and Latin American Militarism (Westport: Greenwood, 1986); and
Roderick Camp, Generals in the Palacio: The Military in Modern Mexico (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992). For the failure of monetarist market reforms, see Karen Remmer, The Chilean Military under
Authoritarian Rule (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987); idem, Military Rule in Latin

22

The literature on U.S. military policy toward the region concentrates on how the
United States overtly subordinated the position of the Latin American military. Unlike
the literature on the Latin American military, U.S. military policy studies still debate the
potential democratizing power of the Latin American armed forces.

United States

military aid helped standardize hemispheric defense and facilitated economic

development according to J. Lloyd Mecham. Raymond Estep draws from his access to
Military Assistance Program data to expose the decidedly limited responsibilities given to
Latin America in hemispheric security and their absence in the decision-making process.
Samuel Huntington lent analytical weight that proved crucial to the framing of U.S.
military policy in the 1960s and 1970s. Better known for his role in shaping U.S. policy
in Vietnam, Huntington developed a model in 1964 for promoting civil-military relations.
He posited that the United States could create the requisite subjective factors in the
military institutions of underdeveloped nations, and that U.S. military training could
socialize the officers themselves to accept civilian and constitutional authority. At the
same time, Huntington argued that the United States military assistance and training had

America (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988); and Patricio Silva, Technocrats and Politics in Chile: From the
Chicago Boys to the CIEPLAN Monks, Journal of Latin American Studies vol. 23 no. 2 (May 1991), 385410. The literature on drug trafficking is rather replete with simplistic policy paeans, but usefully includes
J. Erik Kjonnerod, ed., Evolving U.S. Strategy for Latin America and the Caribbean (Washington: National
Defense University Press, 1992); Teodoro F. Etienne, Fuerzas armadas de Amrica latina: nuevo rol:
problemtica de la droga (Bogot: Tercer Mundo, 1997); Mara Vernica Bastias, El salario del miedo:
narcotrfico en Amrica latina (Buenos Aires: SERPAJ-AL, 1993); and William O. Walker III, ed., Drugs
in the Western Hemisphere: An Odyssey of Cultures in Conflict (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1996).
On cocaine, political corruption, and the United States, see Edmundo Morales, Cocaine: White Gold Rush
in Peru (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1989); Paul Gootenberg, ed., Cocaine: Global Histories
(London: Routledge, 1999); and Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine
Explosion (New York: Seven Stories, 1999). [1998].

23

to preserve the objective factors, to allow military institutions to keep professional

autonomy. Huntington believed the Military Assistance Program could promote both
subjective and objective factors and develop modern, civil-military hierarchies that
would embrace the rule of law as the foundation of their democratizing societies. John
Child analyzes the Inter-American system up to the eve of the Nicaraguan Revolution
and argues that only twice since 1938 did U.S. and Latin American perceptions of
security coincide: during World War II and in the few years after the Cuban Revolution.
Child contends that the United States deliberately kept the alliance unequal,
subordinated Latin American security concerns, and consequently did not reap a fraction
of the potential benefits of the alliance. Max Boot seeks to remind readers of the lesson
learned by U.S. Marines who fought in a series of small wars in the Caribbean, Central
America, and Asia in the early twentieth century.

He argues that the marines

encapsulated their experience in the small wars field manual that emphasized the
necessity of securing the full-faith effort of the host country to actively address the
legitimate aspirations of their populations. Otherwise, the marines wrote, any U.S. effort
was a waste of time and would only lead the people of that country to identify the United
States as their oppressors.11

11

J. Lloyd Mecham, The United States and Inter-American Security (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1961); Raymond Estep, U.S. Military Aid to Latin America (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University,
1966); Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations
(New York: Vantage, 1964); John Child, Unequal Alliance: The Inter-American Military System, 19381978 (Boulder: Westview, 1980); and Boot, Savage Wars of Peace.

24

The School of the Americas, unfortunately, has received only tangential treatment
in the diplomatic and military history literature. Those historians who have addressed the
School of the Americas in their works generally conclude that it did indeed promote a
new emphasis on counterinsurgency training. In the mid-1960s, Barber and Ronning
argued that a shift occurred at the School after 1960 from training for hemispheric
defense to an emphasis on counterinsurgency. Like McClintock later, they correctly
noted that the School of the Americas represented one of many training programs across
the globe that took on added importance with the perceived rise in Communist subversion
in the 1960s.

Each, however, offered only limited discussion of the School itself.

Loveman and Davies argue that Ch Guevara, as the preeminent architect of Cuban
foreign policy in the 1960s, in effect declared war against the United States, its
interests and its allies with the publication of his insurgents manual, Guerrilla Warfare.
They,

along

with

McClintock,

Leacock,

and

LaFeber,

contend

that

U.S.

counterinsurgency programs and training represented a direct response to the challenge

posed by the Cuban Revolution to American economic and political hegemony in the
hemisphere, and that they must be viewed in this light. These authors argue that Walt W.
Rostow provided the intellectual underpinnings for counterinsurgency policy for
American policymakers, especially in the Kennedy administration, when he argued that
specialized training could enable the military of the region to provide political stability.
Such stability was essential for underdeveloped Latin American nations to develop the
economic and political preconditions necessary for democratic institutions to take hold.
Still, despite their apparent importance to the development of counterinsurgency policy,
25

no systematic evaluation of the policy, mission, and techniques utilized at the school, or
its relationship to the formation of U.S.-Latin American policy, yet exists for this
formative period. Critics of the U.S. Army School of the Americass role in training the
Salvadoran Army in the early 1980s have produced a couple of polemics and video that
dubbed the facility at Ft. Gulick and later at Ft. Benning the School of Assassins. Mark
Danner used the United Nations Truth Commissions findings as a foil to examine the
role of the United States in the cover up of human rights abuses, and not the school per
se. In response, a long-time instructor at the School of Americas, Lt. Col. Russell
Ramsay (Ret.), follows in the Huntington tradition and argues that the school still offers a
unique opportunity to inculcate Latin American military in proper civil-military
relations.12
Historians emphasis on economic and security concerns has left out critical
examination of cultural presuppositions, biases, and even racism as determinants of U.S.-

12

The few works that mention the U.S. Army School of the Americas include, Willard Barber and
C. Neale Ronning, Internal Security and Military Power: Counterinsurgency and Civic Action in Latin
America (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1966), 144-8; Michael McClintock, Strategies of
Statecraft: U.S. Guerrilla Warfare, Counter-Insurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990 (New York:
Pantheon, 1992), 185; Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, eds. Loveman and Davies, ix; idem, Politics of
Antipolitics, 163-5; McClintock, Strategies of Statecraft, 161-78; Ruth Leacock, Requiem for Revolution:
The United States and Brazil, 1961-1969 (London: Kent State University Press, 1990), 61-5; LaFeber,
Inevitable Revolutions 195-6. Max F. Millikin and Walt W. Rostow, A Proposal: Key to an Effective
Foreign Policy (New York: Harper, 1957); and Walt W. Rostow, Guerrilla Warfare in Underdeveloped
Areas, Marine Corps Gazette vol. 46 no. 1 (Jan. 1962), 46-49 encapsulate the development/
counterinsurgency ideology of the Kennedy administration. Challengers of the School of the Americas and
its participation in human rights abuses can be found in Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote (New
York: Vintage, 1994). [1993]; School of Americas, School of Assassins, (New York: Maryknoll World
Productions, 1994), 20 min., video; Vicky Imerman, SOA Alumni and Human Rights Abuse (Gilbert, IA:
Info SOA, [1995]); Info SOA, La lagartija=Little lizard: Newsletter of Info SOA (Gilbert, IA: Info SOA,
1995); Jack Nelson-Palmeyer, School of Assassins (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 18-36; and Russell W.
Ramsey, ed., Guardians of the Other Americas: Essays on the Military Forces of Latin America (Lanham,
MD: University Press of America, 1997).

26

Latin American policy in the literature. Some authors have postulated the effect of
cultural bias on U.S.-Latin American policy. Michael Krenn, a long-time critic of the
U.S. State Department and its dealings with Africa and African Americans, has edited
with Paul Finkleman a series of collected works that traces the impact of race on U.S.
foreign policy since the revolutionary period. Racist conceptions of white supremacy
drove Indian removal policies and western expansion, according to Reginald Horsman,
and Anders Stephenson contends that the soaring boosterism of the 1840s laid the
foundation of moral superiority in United States foreign policy that has persisted ever
since. For Rubin Weston, racist expansionists propelled American imperialism in the last
decade of the nineteenth century. It is not too difficult to conceive of race as a significant
determinant in U.S. foreign policy in the 1800s. But others have made the case that the
legacy of Americas paternalistic past permeated the next century as well. Frederick Pike
offers a more culturally nuanced work as he argues that American notions of
civilization reduced the peoples of Latin America along with all other non-white and
non-Protestant groups, women, and even children to primitive victims of nature and
traditional ways that begged for domination. John Johnson offers an enlightening look at
the depictions of Latin Americans in the news media of the United States, which
highlight the stereotypes perpetuated in American culture. Schmitz, like Lars Schoulz,
contends that the United States willingly accepted virulent anti-Communist dictatorships
during the cold war because American policymakers believed that non-white peoples of
the world were simply not ready for self government. Michael Hunt offers some rather
colorful anecdotes that highlight the paternalism of the Eisenhower administration and
27

the power of ideology to direct American foreign policy over time, and not just during the
cold war. Richard Drinnon explains the twentieth-century American collision with Asia
in the Philippines, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam as the logical outgrowth of racist
attitudes shaped during the previous three centuries of continental conquest of North
America. The east-west orientation of United States foreign policy during the cold war,
Drinnon argues, does nothing to belie the lasting power of 350 years of conflict with the
savage and barbarous red, yellow, brown, and black peoples of the world. Combined,
these authors make a compelling case for including racial and cultural bias as a factor that
shaped American foreign policy, especially towards a region like Latin America.13
THE HEGEMONIC PROJECT
The United States government has played a role in securing markets overseas for
the sake of American businessmen and the American economy. Few students of U.S.Latin American relations would argue this point. But it is questionable to what extent
policy has represented the conscious advance of American economic hegemony, and in

13

For an introduction to the significance of race and U.S. policy toward Latin America, start with
Alexander DeConde, Ethnicity, Race, and American Foreign Policy: A History (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1992); and Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. Legrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds.,
Close Encounters with Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations (Durham:
Duke University Pres, 1998). See for example Michael L. Krenn and Paul Finkleman, eds., Race and U.S.
Foreign Policy: From Colonial Times to the Age of Jackson (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1998). And
Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981); Anders Stephenson, Manifest Destiny: American
Expansionism and the Empire of Right (New York: Hill & Wang, 1995); Rubin Francis Weston, Racism in
U.S. Imperialism: The Influence of Racial Assumptions on American Foreign Policy, 1893-1946
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972); Frederick B. Pike, The United States and Latin
America: Myths and Stereotypes of Civilization and Nature (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992); John
J. Johnson, Latin America in Caricature (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980); Michael H. Hunt,
Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); and Richard Drinnon, Facing
West: The Metaphysics of Indian Hating and Empire Building (New York: Shoken, 1990). [1980].

28

the case of this discussion counterinsurgency training has in turn merely reflected the arm
of the state working to stifle dissent. To begin with, the nature of the representative
democracy that exists in the United States does not permit such an entity as the reified
state to exist. Consequently, while economic elites do possess vastly disproportionate
economic power, those same elites have over the past two centuries had to accept
preferential treatment by the federal government rather than direction and control
governance at the national level.

Different groups, ethnic, racial, and religious

minorities, along with women, have battled successfully for greater and greater inclusion
in the decision-making process in the United States. While those groups do not yet enjoy
equal participation, the federal and state government does have to address the collective
desires of interest groups other than economic elites. Because of their wealth and greater
access to the government, economic elites can and do seek to circumscribe the range of
debate and action. Hence, there is something to the argument that U.S. policy advances
the interests of industrial capitalism in the United States. But it is the production of ideas
that holds the key to understanding the purpose of economic development and
counterinsurgency training as a part of U.S. policy toward Latin America. And Antonio
Gramsci offers a tool to ascertain how those ideas are constructed the hegemonic
project.
Antonio Gramsci is a historical materialist.

Marxists operate from the

presumption that class divides modern industrial societies, with class position determined
by the objective relations to the means of production. Asymmetrical power relations are
inherent to class structures.

Dominant classes possess power and do their best to

29

perpetuate that power. Subordinate classes struggle against domination from a position
of weakness.

Gamsci refines this model in his collected maunderings, The Prison

Notebooks, by focusing on the production of ideas. First, he divides society into two
classes: ruling and subaltern. Dominant classes, from which the ruling class arises, by
definition engage subalterns in a struggle to control the surplus value of labor. Gramsci
argues, however, that economic interests alone cannot unite the competing factions that
exist within the dominant classes of capitalist societies. Instead, he believes that there
exists a connection between objective reality and the ideas that shape ones perceptions
of his or her experience. Consequently, factions within the dominant class work to
produce an "ideological consensus," a world view shared by society that provides
legitimacy to ruling-class authority and perpetuates their power. The intellectual elite
of society are chosen to craft the ideas the hegemonic project that will reinforce ruling
class authority. The state disseminates the hegemonic project in order to lend it political
legitimacy. Now, the ruling class has defined the very ideas of political participation in
order to circumscribe the range of political debate. The state has the responsibility of
maintaining social order.

In "moments of crisis," or subaltern social, political, or

economic activism, the state is expected to enforce "discipline on those groups who do
not consent either actively or passively" to the hegemonic project of the ruling class.
When the existing hegemonic project is sufficiently threatened by collective subaltern
action, then a new ruling class will emerge with a new hegemonic project to restore
dominance. Even though Gramsci grants some reactive role to the subaltern in his model,

30

people are generally not historical actors but instead are subject to the weight of historical
process and the ideological consensus of ruling class hegemony.14
The strength of Gramscian notions of hegemony lies in the emphasis on the social
production of ideas and, in turn, policy. There are, however, a few important caveats.
Derek Sayer challenges historians to demonstrate, first of all, that any such hegemonic
program consciously exists in the minds of elites. William Roseberry sees hegemony as
a complex, dynamic process shaped by contestation in the material and political reality of
social relations. Further, he argues that this contested social terrain is a discursive one in
which the meanings of the very words themselves evolve, not via any hegemonic
imposition of elite ideology, but amidst a dynamic process of social interaction between
subalterns and dominant classes. T. Jackson Lears concurs, arguing that language can
serve as the medium to create historical blocs that cut across class lines and that may, in
time, supplant an existing hegemony. Lears applauds the discovery of this concept by
American historians, because he believes hegemony can illuminate the oft-ignored nature
of power in the United States. But since hegemony is wedded to language, and language
is a cultural phenomenon, hegemony must be seen as cultural. To view it as such,
however, requires an appreciation of all the cultural components race, class, gender,

14

Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans.
Quinten Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971), 12.

31

and ethnicity that empower hegemony's persistence. Lears believes that hegemony
manifests itself in the United States through advertising.15
More often, economic elites exercise their influence through the ideas of business
organization. And for Gramsci, the most important hegemonic project of the twentieth
century was contained in Fordism. Fordism is not just a propagation of ideas. Rather, its
utility stems from its ability to engage workers in a work regime that reinforces the ideas
of a specific social order. Moreover, this demanding work regime purges workers of the
energy necessary to mount a counter-hegemonic project, and therefore prevents workers
from indulging in what the ruling class views as socially unacceptable behavior. Gramsci
also believes that all people are philosophers who consider their world but are forced to
deal with their material reality, which does not permit, or often jibe with, their ideas.
Fordism, Gramsci contends, offers a totalizing hegemonic project for the ruling class
because it resolves the workers paradox by creating and propagating notions of the
worker as a critical cog in a social project of national development. Fordism makes ideas
fit reality, at least the reality the ruling class would like to see.16
Fordism emerged out of the scientific management movement of the early
twentieth century. The late nineteenth century in America witnessed the rapid and often

15

Derek Sayer, Everyday Forms of State Formation: Some Dissident Remarks on Hegemony,
in Everyday Forms of State Formation, eds. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1994), 367-77; William Roseberry, Hegemony and the Language of Contention, in
Everyday Forms of State Formation, 355-66; T. Jackson Lears, The Concept of Cultural Hegemony:
Problems and Possibilities, American Historical Review vol. 90 no. 3 (June 1985), 567-93; and see idem,
Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
16

See Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 277-320.

32

chaotic reorganization of all facets of life. Amidst the rapidly advancing technology,
American businesses sought a means to improve efficiency and replace labor as an
independent variable with experts who could determine the nature of production.
Frederick Winslow Taylor offered scientific management as a palliative for wasteful,
inefficient industrial production. Taylor argued that his methods would provide the
optimal environment for harmonious, efficient production, themes that Progressive
America found quite appealing.

Taylor's program called for the elimination of

decentralized production under the foreman, or gang leader.

He contended that

managers must remove from workers the responsibility of decision making in the
production process, and instead provide them with the tools and environment necessary
to work most efficiently. To do so, a manager must determine what constitutes a proper
days work. In Shop Management, Taylor details his method of time studies, using a
stopwatch, a log book, and mathematical calculations, to ascertain the nature and, most
important, the rate of work over time during a given work day. So armed, managers
could then develop a differential rate of piece work, alternately rewarding and
punishing workers with pay based, not per unit, but on the rate of work during a work
day. In order to gain optimum output, a manager must give some special incentive,
through advancement, monetary bonuses, and training, to his workman. Only then
could management train workers in scientifically designed work regimes that provided

33

for the maximum prosperity for the employer . . . coupled with the maximum prosperity
for the employ.17
Business in the United States selected only portions of Taylor's methods. Milton
J. Nadworny cites United States government documents to show that scientific
management came to represent something quite different from the specific protocols of
Frederick Winslow Taylor. Barbara Weinstein declares that the blatantly oppressive
features of Taylorism explain its minimal adoption in the United States. Hindy Lauer
Schachter, on the other hand, seeks to resurrect Taylor, arguing that this authoritarian
and primitive reputation belies a democratic spirit. Petersen, et al., contend that critics
of Taylor are in fact challenging the overweening enthusiasm of Taylor's proponents,
who conducted an avid search for the one best way.

Sudhir Kakar, in his

psychohistory of an innovative personality, insists that Taylor consistently emphasized

the economic man and that a workers only motivation . . . was an extra bonus.
Wrege and Greenwood counter that Taylor's dynamic system has never been
installed. Schachter also argues that Taylor's efforts to systematize production reflected
industrialists desire in the United States during the late nineteenth century for greater
efficiency. The literature on management in the United States reflects this rationalization
of the workplace. Guilln writes that business pushed for greater efficiency, used the
stopwatch, but ignored the admonitions regarding worker compensation. The rise of

17

Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Norton,
1967), 53. [1911]. See Frederick Winslow Taylor, Shop Management (New York: Harper and Brothers,
1911), 149-168, for the author's discussion of time studies; and ibid., 76; Taylor, Scientific Management,
33; and ibid., 9.

34

scientific management warrants only a brief mention within the development of the
modern business enterprise for Alfred DuPont Chandler, a proponent of the structural
analysis school of American business management that emerged in the late 1950s in the
United States. While Taylor became the best known expert on factory management,
for Chandler he represented a current in business thought that became known as the line
and staff type of factory organization. In The Visible Hand, Chandler describes an
historical process of increasing business compartmentalization, professionalization, and
management control of production that led to the modern business enterprise.18
The international consumption of scientific management proved to be variable
and inconsistent as well.

Kakar correctly noted that, Taylor's ideas have had an

enormous influence on the industrial life of all countries. He cites such historical
luminaries as Georges Clemenceau and V. I. Lenin as devotees of the "universality and
neutrality" of Taylor's system of industrial production. While Schachter notes that Robert
Dahl and others vilified what they believed to be a persistent authoritarian strain in
Taylor's ideas, scientific management and Taylorism spread far beyond the borders of the

18

Milton J. Nadworny, Scientific Management and the Unions, 1900-1932: A Historical Analysis
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), 91; Barbara Weinstein, For Social Peace in Brazil:
Industrialists and the Remaking of the Working Class in So Paulo, 1920-1964 (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1996), 5; Hindy Lauer Schachter, Frederick Taylor and the Public Administration
Community: A Reevaluation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989) 1; Elmore Petersen, et
al., Business Organization and Management, 5th ed. (Homewood, IL: Richard D. Erwin, 1962), 253-4;
Sudhir Kakar, Frederick Taylor: A Study in Personality (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Press, 1970), 99 and 193; Charles D. Wrege and Ronald F. Greenwood, Frederick W. Taylor, The Father of
Scientific Management: Myth and Reality (Homewood, IL: Business One Irwin, 1991), 10; and Mauro F.
Guilln, Models of Management: Work, Authority, and Organization in a Comparative Perspective
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 30-50; Alfred D. Chandler, The Visible Hand: The
Management Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1977), 1 and 277.

35

United States. Europe in the 1920s found much appeal in scientific management and
Fordism and other equivalent nostrums, believing they were the motor of American
prosperity and social harmony. Maier argues that the political right in Italy, France and
Germany seized upon scientific management as a political weapon in its effort to
systematize social control. In Germany, Mauro F. Guilln writes that the state played
an active role in promoting a mixed public-private orchestrated and corporatist
organization of the economy. Mary Nolan traces the concerted efforts of industrialists,
bourgeois feminists, and social democratic trade leaders in Weimar Germany to
rationalize the working-class home and housework along the lines of Taylorism and
scientific management.

Spain adopted scientific management in the mid-1940s in

response to the demands of World War II, more than two decades after the United States,
which had done so in response to internal technological advancement and labor unrest.
Don Van Atta argues that the failure of scientific management and Taylorism to take hold
in the Soviet Union, despite its quite conscious adoption in the 1920s and 1930s, reflected
a quite different context in which coercion replaced incentive in increasingly
compartmentalized production regimes.19
Elites in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile also adopted scientific management
methods in an effort to enhance productivity. Barbara Weinstein details the efforts of

19

Kakar, Frederick Taylor, 2-3; Schachter, Public Administration Community, 111; Charles S.
Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany and Italy in the Decade After World
War I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 583; Guilln, Models of Management, 269; Mary
Nolan, Housework Made Easy: The Taylorized Housewife in Weimar Germanys Rationalized
Economy, Feminist Studies vol. 16 no. 3 (Fall 1990), 549; and Don Van Atta, Why Is There No
Taylorism in the Soviet Union? Comparative Politics vol. 18 no. 3 (Apr. 1986), 327.

36

Brazilian industrialists in the 1930s to adopt Fordism. Although he vehemently denied it,
Henry Ford adopted many of Taylor's techniques and ideas regarding the scientific
determination of the most efficient manner of production utilizing the least amount of
time by the worker. Ford was a firm believer in the modernizing and beneficent effects
of technology. He outlined his thoughts on business and labor relations in a widely read
treatise entitled Today and Tomorrow, where Ford stressed the importance of saving
natural resources, the value of wage incentives, and the necessity of standards. In his
study of Ford's Highland Park, Michigan plant, Stephen Meyer writes that Ford
management and production regimes created a legion of deskilled specialists.
Weinstein argues that Brazilian industrialists patterned their own social hygiene
programs after Fords Department of Sociology as part of a conscious effort to impose a
new hegemonic project on the poor (and mostly black) women who worked in their
factories. Guilln writes that Argentina's corporatist state could not overcome labor's
opposition to scientific management. Robert Alexander concurs. Mirta Zada Lobato
describes how international competition had forced meatpackers in Argentina to increase
the parcelization of tasks but that worker resistance prevented its adoption. In a
consciously post-Structuralist effort, Daniel James argues that the Argentine working
class opposed Taylorism and actively constructed alternative meanings to industrial life
and developed political programs. Peter Winn describes the United States aid programs
in 1962 to Chile, which provided technical experts to help implement scientific
management. This assistance doubled productivity but also halved the labor force.

37

Latin Americans wanted increased productivity and preferred U.S. production models,
but local conditions predicated their consumption of Taylorism and Fordism.20
Taylorism and Fordism never did reach the status of a hegemonic project in the
United States.

Instead, the ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor reflected a growing

movement to organize and compartmentalize production in American industry at the turn

of the twentieth century. Scientific management emerged as the preferred philosophy of
the day, and Taylors ideas lay at its core. While industrialists in the United States did
not apply Taylorism in its totality, they embraced the central tenet that experts could
identify rational production regimes to free American industry from the cultural baggage
of nineteenth-century practices. Taylors ideas did change work in the United States.
And the widespread international adoption of Taylorism demonstrates the power of his
ideas. German and Brazilian elites in the 1920s did attempt to employ Taylorism as a
hegemonic project in their nations modernization efforts. But the United States did not.
Williams, McCormick, LaFeber, and other revisionists have long argued that, beginning
at least in the late nineteenth century, the United States government accepted its

20

Stephen H. Haber, Industry and Underdevelopment: The Industrialization of Mexico, 1890-1940

(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), examines the adoption of U.S. management practices in
Mexico. Weinstein, Social Peace; Henry Ford, with Fay Leone Faurote, My Philosophy of Industry (New
York: Coward-McCann, 1929); Henry Ford, with Samuel Crowther, Today and Tomorrow (New York:
Doubleday, Page, & Co., 1926); Stephen Meyer, III, The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social
Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), 19;
Guilln, Models of Management, 271; Robert C. Alexander, Labor Relations in Argentina, Brazil and
Chile, foreword John Dunlop (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962); Mirta Zada Lobato, El taylorismo en la
gran industria exportadora Argentina, 1907-1945 (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de Amrica latina, 1988),
21; Daniel James, Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946-1976
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and Peter Winn, A Workers Nightmare: Taylorism and
the 1962 Yarur Strike in Chile, Radical History Review 58 (Win. 1994), 23.

38

responsibility as an emerging industrial state to procure for American business the

markets necessary for capitalist expansion. While critics have rightly challenged the at
times overweening emphasis on economic imperialism in revisionist works, the history of
the United States for more than a century has witnessed a progressive trend toward
greater and greater intervention by the federal government as a result of the acceptance of
its responsibility to secure the nations economy. Certain progressives, socialists, and
union activists may have wanted government to intercede more often in the first decades
of the century, but Americans in the main, and business and industry in particular, did not
see the need prior to 1929. But by the time World War II had ended, the American
people, their government, and their industrial leaders had accepted the necessity of
federal government stewardship of the economy. The ensuing cold war only heightened
the importance of this new responsibility. For this reason, in the context of the cold war,
development programs took on a relevance that Taylorism did not.

Development

ideology did represent a conscious and ongoing effort by the United States government to
impose an economic and political ethos expressly designed to counter subaltern
acceptance of Communism in Latin America. Ultimately, though, development models
have not been able to overcome the social, historical, political, and economic dynamics of
the countries the United States has tried to assist, nor have they consistently served the
ends of American presidents and their administrations.21

21

See Williams, Tragedy of American Diplomacy; LaFeber, The New Empire; and Thomas J.
McCormick, The China Market: Americas Quest for Informal Empire (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1967). Alan
Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Knopf, 1995).

39

Development was a peculiarly 1950s phenomenon. The United States emerged

from World War II with unprecedented political, military, and economic power.
According to Arturo Escobar, Americans in this period possessed an implicit faith in
technology as the salvation for the world, and an unshakeable conviction in America as
its savior. What began as the rationalization of production regimes under Taylor had
grown to a nearly religious conviction that the technical and technological expertise of
the United States possessed universal application. Fernando Henrique Cardoso charged
that the literature on industrial capitalism has concentrated too much on management as a
technical function and has ignored the dialectical power dynamic inherent to management
systems. Cardoso argued that the bureaucratization of business and the depolitization of
the economy was in fact sociologically inconsistent with power relations in a capitalist
society. Nevertheless, Americans in the 1940s and 1950s exalted corporate structures
and considered them the epitome of American economic supremacy. And in the midst of
the emerging cold war, the United States viewed its administrative, technological, and
scientific accomplishments as proof of the superiority of the American way of life.
President Harry S. Truman, in his inaugural address in 1949, called on Americans to
make use of their economic preeminence to help the unfortunate countries of the world.
In an effort to help Americans make sense of the post-war changes to the international
arena, and to satisfy growing anti-Communism, Truman divided the world between the
developed and the underdeveloped, the rich and the poor. Development soon came to be
understood as the process by which western nations would use technology to modernize
poor societies wedded to traditional ways. Escobar decried what he believed was a
40

blatantly patriarchal and ethnocentric exercise that not only denied the sociocultural
variability of Latin American cultures and the region's existing inequalities, it effectively
removed development from the political realm to the scientific. Now, development
was simply a technical problem to be solved devoid of politics.22
Since World War II, academics and policy makers have pondered the absence of
modern-industrial economies in Latin America and elsewhere in the non-Western world.
Many proponents of development programs in the cold war focused on the moderntraditional dichotomy, contending that less-developed economies existed in nations where
more traditional value systems continued to hold sway. The pervasiveness of such
traditional ways maintained corrupt corporate structures, which prevented Latin America
from properly integrating itself into the world economy and limited national economic
development. Economic growth, it was felt, would stimulate the national economic
infrastructures necessary for proper development and alleviate the region's seemingly
inherent political instability.

Ral Prebisch and the United Nations Economic

Commission on Latin America in the early 1950s began the push for development in
Latin America but argued that the regions history posed unique developmental problems.
Latin America, according to Prebisch, went from undeveloped before, to underdeveloped
after, the Conquest because the new international division of labor reduced Latin
America to a source of extractable raw materials.

22

The subsequent inequitable

Escobar, Encountering Development argues that the United States consciously created the
development discourse to de-legitimatize Latin American necessities. Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
Empresrio industrial e desenvolvimento econmico no Brasil, 2d ed. (So Paulo: Difuso Europia do
Livro, 1972), 23; and Escobar, Encountering Development.

41

international distribution of wealth prevented the now underdeveloped nations from

building the complex economic base believed necessary for industrialization.

State

direction of the domestic economy and foreign capital were therefore seen as crucial to
jump starting the development process. Few other proponents of developmentalism, as it
was called in the 1950s, offered such cautions. Daniel Lerner touted his analysis of
modernization in the Middle East as proof that western social sciences could pierce the
veil of traditional societies. For Albert O. Hirschman, economics provided salvation for
the underdeveloped world. Hirschman believed that the science of economics was no
different than physics; universal economic laws applied across borders and therefore
represented the essential tool for promoting development. While W. Arthur Lewis was
less sanguine that Western models could be planted successfully, Lucien Pye gushed
enthusiastically that his analysis of Burma in 1961 proved that development would work.
Pye had not established a development program; instead, he conducted some interviews
and deemed development likely for that country. Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal
offered a more staid assessment in 1958, but assured that with appropriate central
planning development projects should succeed.23

23

Some stalwart developmentalists over the years include George Blanksten, The Politics of
Latin America, The Politics of Developing Areas, ed. Gabriel A. Almond and James S. Coleman
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 455-531; Gino Germani, Stages of Modernization in Latin
America, in Latin America: The Dynamics of Social Change (London: Allison & Burby, 1972), 1-43;
Kalman Silvert and Leonard Reismann. Education, Class, and Nation: The Experiences of Chile and
Venezuela (New York: Elsevier, 1976); and Kalman Silvert, Essays in Understanding Latin America
(Philadelphia: ISHI, 1977). See Ral Prebisch, Towards a Dynamic Development Policy for Latin America
(New York: United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America, 1950); Daniel Lerner, The Passing
of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (New York: Free Press, 1958); Albert O. Hirschman,
The Strategy for Economic Development (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958); W. Arthur Lewis,
Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour, in Economics of Underdevelopment, eds.

42

Walt W. Rostow combined the many threads of development in his self-styled

Non-Communist Manifesto into a powerful call to arms. What raised The Stages of
Economic Growth far above every other work on development was that Rostow took his
belief in a universal premise that progress went through identifiable, predictable,
repeatable stages and explicitly connected that with his conviction that the United
States could use development to stave off Communism in the underdeveloped world.
Building on his 1953 work, Rostow charted economic development as a function of
industrialization and technological innovation. Here, Rostow echoed his collaboration
with MIT economist Max Milikin of three years earlier, when they wrote that there
existed common elements that all developed western capitalist democracies possessed.
In 1957 Milikin and Rostow wrote of underdeveloped nations that no two of these
countries are alike. That is why Rostow, on the first page of Stages, stressed the
necessity of tailoring each development program to the specific country in question. But,
since industrial development could be traced on an inevitable historical timeline,
accelerating development was simply a function of identifying need and implementing
appropriate planning.

The purpose of development was to stimulate the requisite

institutions financial markets, a middle class, predictable monetary flows for the

Aman Narin Agarvualu and S. P. Singh (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1958); Lucien Pye, Politics,
Personality, and Nation Building: Burmas Search for Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962);
and Gunnar Myrdal, Development and Underdevelopment (Cairo: National Bank of Egypt, 1956).

43

underdeveloped economy to take off, to establish the institutional and infrastructural

foundation to create the momentum necessary to make development self-sustaining.24
But Communist subversion threatened development at this vulnerable stage.
Milikin and Rostow warned in 1957 that development programs would experience a
series of false starts that would often require important political and social changes. It
was during this tender, liminal stage that the disease of the transition loomed
Communism. In 1955, Rostow sought to apprise Americans of the stern task they faced
in confronting Communism. Since the United States eschewed a military resolution
and rightly so as a moral people, he argued the United States had to contend with the
immoral excesses of our enemy in the battle for the third world. But Rostow remained
convinced that America could meet the challenge. Rostow held the conviction that the
United States represented a force for positive good, arguing that Americans needed to
draw on its limited but real margin of influence on the course of history. Development
offered the way for a moral society to meet the challenge of Communism and aid the
underdeveloped nations of the world.

Economics would provide the scientific

techniques; American commitment would see development through. In 1960, Rostow

had the answer to Communist subversion counterinsurgency.25

24

Walt W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1960); idem, The Process of Economic Growth (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1953); Millikin and Rostow, Key to an Effective Foreign Policy, 43, 47-8; and Rostow,
Stages of Economic Growth, 17-28. See Michael E. Latham, Modernization As Ideology: American Social
Science and Nation building in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 2000), for
discussion of the implementation of development in Southeast Asia during the 1980s.
25

Millikin and Rostow, Key to an Effective Foreign Policy, 45; Rostow, Stages of Economic
Growth, 162; Walt W. Rostow, An American Policy in Asia (New York: Wiley, 1955) viii, was a sequel to

44

A competing paradigm emerged in the cultural and intellectual ferment of the

1960s: dependency theory. While competing versions persist, the basis of this theory is
that Latin America's so-called economic backwardness stemmed not from a lack of
integration with the world economy, but from exploitive and asymmetrical global
interrelationships which over the course of centuries have generated and perpetuated the
regions dependent status. Dependent economies, which lack the self-sufficiency of
dominant ones, depend on the external economic expansion of those dominant
economies not only for economic growth but for mere survival. This is not a structuralmechanistic imposition of exploitive power over dependent nations, and by no means
does this represent a recent phenomenon according to Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Indeed, Cristbal Kay argues that the strength of dependency analysis lies in the
emphasis on the dialectical nature of the dependent/dominant relationship. Andr Gunder
Frank, Stanley and Barbara Stein, and Enrique Semo argue persuasively that the roots of
Latin American underdevelopment lie in the Conquest and the subsequent colonial
period. Historically, dependency has meant that Latin America has been forced to remain
a source of cheap raw materials and agricultural products since the dominant economies
have consciously thwarted industrialization. Celso Furtado, Fernando Novais, and Peter
Evans conclude that Brazils industrialization efforts in the 1950s still followed the
pattern of dependent development. John Hall disagrees and believes that the deep-seated
cultural values held by Portuguese and Brazilian elites perpetuated a clientilistic system

idem, The Prospects for Communist China (Cambridge: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 1954); and Rostow, Guerrilla Warfare in Underdeveloped Areas.

45

in which patrons dispensed benefits to clients in exchange for social standing and
economic gain. While dependency analysis has been rightly criticized for an overtly
reductive determinism that imputes motivation based on a presumed class position of
Latin American elites as a group, rather than as individuals, Cardoso and Falleto correctly
stress that the variety of responses in Latin America to the world economy reflects a
complex interplay of competing social, political, and economic interests. But, as E.
Bradford Burns points out, Latin American elites were not hapless victims in the process
of underdevelopment. They welcomed extractive enterprises because they benefited the
elites social and political position.26

26

Theotonio dos Santos, The Structure of Dependence, American Economic Review vol. 60 no.
2 (1970), 234. On the debate within dependency, see Gabriel Palma, Dependency: A Formal Theory of
Underdevelopment or a Methodology for the Analysis of Concrete Situations of Underdevelopment?
World Development vol. 6 no. 7/8 (July/Aug. 1978), 881-924; and Raymond D. Duvall, Dependence and
Dependencia Theory: Notes toward Precision of Concept and Argument, International Organization vol.
32 no. 1 (Win. 1978), 51-78. dos Santos, Structure of Dependence, 231 emphasizes the asymmetrical
nature of the dependent relationship. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, The Consumption of Dependency
Theory in the United States, Latin American Research Review vol. 12 (1977), 14; Cristbal Kay, Latin
American Theories of Development and Underdevelopment (London: Routledge, 1989); Celso Furtado,
The Economic Development of Latin America: Historical Background and Contemporary Problems, 2d ed.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 47-9; Andr Gunder Frank, The Development of
Underdevelopment, Monthly Review (Sept. 1966), 17-31; Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, The
Colonial Heritage of Latin America: Essays on Economic Dependence in Perspective (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1970); Enrique Semo, The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763,
trans. Lidia Lozano (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); Celso Furtado, The Economic Growth of
Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963); Fernando A. Novais, Brazil in the Old Colonial
System, trans. Richard Graham and Hank Phillips, in Brazil and the World System, ed. Richard Graham
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), 11-55; and Peter Evans, Dependent Development: The Alliance of
Multi-National State and Local Capital in Brazil, foreword Florestan Fernandes (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979). John R. Hall, The Patrimonial Dynamic in Colonial Brazil, in Brazil and the
World System, 57-88 argues for local determinants of underdevelopment. On the historical antecedents of
Brazilian clientalism, see Raymundo Faoro, Os donos do poder: formao do patronato politico brasileiro,
2 vols. (So Paulo: Editora Globo, 1975). [1959]. And Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Falletto,
Dependency and Development (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), [1969]; and E. Bradford
Burns, The Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1980).

46

Students of democratization have argued that development models have failed

because they do not consider the uniqueness of western capitalism. Critics charge that
the conditions school of economic development refuses to consider the power that local
political, cultural, and economic dynamics have to distort the models effectiveness.
Since 1982, Latin American nations have increasingly adopted neo-liberal, monetarist
economic policies. Following the lead of Chile, Mexico has increasingly relied on
economic technocrats to formulate state economic policy. But the lack of a complex
physical and financial infrastructure in country after country not only deprives these
market reforms of their vitality but also removes its relevance. Dankwart Rustow and
Terry Lynn Karl have successfully argued that attributing causality to the descriptive
characteristics of western models of liberal democracy cannot account for the dynamics
of the democratization process.

Adam Przeworski emphasizes that democracy is

institutionalized uncertainty. In a democratic society, a multiplicity of interests compete

within a regulated institutional framework, in which outcomes cannot be dictated. Not
surprisingly, authoritarian bureaucrats abhor such a state of affairs. Predictability is their
raison d'etre. In labeling the transition to democracy a compromise, Guillermo O'Donnell
and Phillipe Schmitter follow in the intellectual tradition of Rustow, who argued that
insofar as it is a genuine compromise, it will seem second best to all major parties
involved.

Karl does well, then, to acknowledge the variety of forms that the

democratization process can take. Rustow and Dahl highlight the historical rarity of
democracy.

Dahl found that the conditions for what he called polyarchy were

comparatively uncommon and not easily created. Rustow remarked that democratic
47

transitions follow no geographic, temporal, or social pattern.

Institutionalizing

uncertainty, after all, is a precarious undertaking. Most of all, development models

ignore the violence that has marred the long democratization process in western
countries.27
American businessmen and American policymakers embraced Taylor and
Rostows ideas because they provided the right conceptual tools at the right time. Each
imbued their ideas with liberating characteristics that would free the work place and the
underdeveloped nations from the weight of primitive ways. It is no mistake that Taylor
wrote at a time of rampant nativism in the United States. The massive influx of southern
and eastern Europeans at the turn of the twentieth century offended the Protestant
sensibilities of Victorian America and seemed to bid fare to overwhelm the American
Way of Life.

These new immigrants brought decidedly alien ways of life, dress,

27

David Pion-Berlin, The Defiant State: Chile in the Post-Coup Era, in Armies and Politics in
Latin America, ed. Abraham F. Lowenthal and J. Samuel Fitch (New York: Holes & Meier, 1986), 317334; Antonio Ocampo, New Economic Thinking in Latin America, Journal of Latin American Studies
vol. 22 no. 1 (Feb. 1990), 169-181; Silva, Technocrats and Politics in Chile, 385-410; and John H.
Welch, The New Face of Latin America: Financial Flows, Markets and Institutions in the 1990s, Journal
of Latin American Studies vol. 25 no. 1 (Feb. 1993), 1-24, detail the failure of monetarist market reforms.
Miguel Angel Centeno, Democracy within Reason: Technocratic Revolution in Mexico (University Park:
Penn State University Press, 1994), examines the growing role of technocrats in Latin American society
with a case study on Mexico. Dankwart Rustow, Transitions to Democracy: Toward A Dynamic Model,
Comparative Politics vol. II (Apr. 1970), 337-363; Terry Lynn Karl, Dilemmas of Democratization in
Latin America, Comparative Politics vol. 23 no. 1 (Oct. 1990), 1-21; Adam Przeworski, Some Problems
in the Study of the Transition to Democracy, in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative
Perspectives, ed. Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, with foreword by
Abraham F. Lowenthal (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 47-63; Robert Alan Dahl,
Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971); Samuel P. Huntington,
Will More Countries Become Democratic? Political Science Quarterly vol. 99 (Sum. 1984), 193-218;
Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions
about Uncertain Democracies, foreword Abraham F. Lowenthal (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1986); Rustow, Transitions to Democracy, 357; Karl, Dilemmas of Democratization; and Dahl,
Polyarchy, 32.

48

language, and faith. They even brought ideologies that threatened the very fabric of
competitive ideologically speaking at least market capitalism. Scientific management
gave owners the means to regulate the workplace, minimize the significance of workers
skill, and more efficiently generate profits while securing their control of the workplace.
Walt Rostow emerged at a time when the United States found itself battling for control of
the non-white peoples of the world. Communism attacked the legacy of colonialism and
imperialism, and it found more than a few would-be patriots receptive to what American
policymakers believed was an antithetical world view.

Development ideology

reconfigured the primitive and traditional societies of the third world to an economic
status: underdeveloped. Progress simply had not yet transformed these societies into
peaceful, democratic capitalist ones. Now, policymakers could employ mechanisms to
stimulate the conditions necessary for that intrinsically anti-Communist development.
It is essential to remember that individual entrepreneurs and individual
policymakers used scientific management and development because it served their
immediate needs. Not everyone in the early twentieth century or in the 1960s, or since,
embraced these ideas. And those that did adopt the ways of scientific management and
development left significant portions out. Each of these innovators, Frederick Winslow
Taylor and Walt Whitman Rostow, included essential caveats to their programs. For
Taylor, owners needed to adopt the bonus system to provide workers with the necessary
incentive to embrace decidedly monotonous work regimes and eschew the antics of labor
organizers. Rostow could not conceive of development occurring unless security forces
made active efforts to provide for the basic needs of the peoples who were prone to rebel.
49

In each case, they were ignored.

American business loved the idea of experts

ascertaining what workers should be doing and a stopwatch to determine how long a task
should take. But American industry, as a whole, conveniently left out any bonus systems
and pocketed the profits.

Rostow conceived of civic action as the backbone to

development but few security forces in Latin America would stoop to manual labor and
American policymakers had a hard time spending the requisite monies to make it happen.
Most of all, Americans embraced the ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor and Walt
W. Rostow because each tapped into a deep well of capitalist notions of progress. For
Americans, progress has long meant the inevitable march of history and the continual
expansion of civilization, of Christianity, of technological innovation. A true teleology,
Americans have believed have had faith that progress would, because it must, because
it had no other choice, push back the frontiers of ignorance, idolatry, and savagery.
Frederick Jackson Turner did not invent it, but he did a remarkable job articulating the
processional view of American history. His essay The Significance of the Frontier in
American History encapsulated a view that Americans had embraced for centuries.28
The turmoil of the 1960s and the social and political critics of that age fundamentally
challenged the tenets of the American Way of Life and fostered competing views that
have forced Americans to reconsider long-held truisms of American exceptionalism. Yet

28

See Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation
(New York: Vintage, 1963); and Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American
History, in Annual Report for 1893 (Washington: American Historical Association, 1894), 199-227, in
Frontier and Section: Selected Essays of Frederick Jackson Turner, intro. Ray Allen Billington (Englewood
Cliff: Prentice-Hall, 1961), 37-62.

50

the power of that exceptionalism, the conviction of American greatness, still resonates
deeply in contemporary society.

The blatant boosterism and paternalism of John

OSullivans manifest destiny has modulated over the intervening decades.

The

symbols used to define America certainly have changed: railroads that cross the trackless
wilderness, huge vats of molten steel, enormous turbines, skyscrapers that seem to pierce
the sky, bridges to span chasms and rivers and bays, colossal dams to hold back the
waters and harness the very power of nature, interstate freeways that crisscross the land
to bring prosperity and ease, jets to ply the air and supertankers to ply the oceans, rocket
ships that soar into the heavens, and computers. Language, too, has moderated the
conceptions of progress as each generation has drawn upon its experiences to forge a
vision of America that reflects their challenges, their dreams, and their historical context.
Life in the early twenty-first century is far removed from that of the nineteenth, in pace,
content, aspirations, and opportunity. But twentieth-century trumpeters of the American
Way of Life from Bruce Barton to Billy Graham to Jerry Falwell; from Theodore
Roosevelt to John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan have lost none of the expectation that
America would be, and must be, great. Americans are Gods chosen few. America could
only succeed. That conviction sustained the men who forged American foreign policy
during the cold war.
THE LINGUISTIC TURN
The key to understanding how a culture transmits such conceptions as progress
over time requires an appreciation of the role of language as both the medium and a
mediator in that process. The linguistic turn in history represents an effort to use post51

structuralist ideas to reconstruct the past. The primary emphasis of the linguistic turn is
the social construction of meaning and, therefore, the social construction of history.
George Herbert Mead first lectured in the 1910s and 1920s, insisting that society was a
complex and negotiated interaction of arbitrarily but systemically collected symbols
language. For Mead and his students, human beings can utilize language because they
possess a reflexive self that enables them to actively interpret and define situations in
which they are about to engage by taking the role of the other. Individuals, regardless
of age, learn appropriate behavior through repeated joint interaction with other social
actors. They draw upon an ever-growing compendium of experience to define the social
context. Then, people choose how to use language to interact by interpreting the likely
response to their words before they engage in a specific interaction. Borrowing heavily
from Freud and Weber, Mead postulated that humans combine a socially derived me
with their innate individuality the I in order to define the socially contested other,
which enables them to consciously engage in negotiated joint action with other social
actors. In a more recent commentary, Dominic La Capra challenges historians to deal
with the meaning of the documents they purvey, rather than just to try to fill a niche in
the historical record. He advocates the analytical use of rhetoric, which requires a
sensitivity to the dialogical and performative nature of meaning, politics, and power
in language that historical actors unfailingly employ. Such a perspective requires the
historian to evaluate the problematic nature of knowledge. It further requires those

52

disinterring the past to attempt to identify the multitude of actors engaged in the
construction of meaning in a given society, at a given time and through time.29
The renewed emphasis on language in history grew out of a larger debate
concerning the nature of society and communication of culture. Structuralism emerged
as a method of literary criticism in the late 1950s and early 1960s that sought, among
other things, to replace the economic determinism of Marxism-Leninism. As a group,
structuralists wanted to move beyond a reactive model and instead were concerned with
structures or systems of thought or culture.

These structuralists differed from

structural-functionalists who impute behavior as a function of social structures and

institutions like the family, the state, and the legal system. Understanding behavior for
the structural-functionalist, then, becomes a process of identifying the relevant social
function of the institutional framework in which an individual or group finds themselves.

29

George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist, ed.
with intro. Charles W. Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), 44-5, 54-5, 160-1. Meads
students, Herbert Blumer foremost among them, collated their notes of his lectures and published them
posthumously. Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interaction: Perspective and Method (Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice Hall, 1969); Susan Shott, Society, Self, Mind and Moral Philosophy: The Scottish Moralists as
Precursors to Symbolic Interactionism, Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences vol. 12 (1976), 3946; P. D. Ashworth, Symbolic Interaction and Consciousness (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1979), 7-15; and
William I. Thomas, The Definition of the Situation, in The Unadjusted Girl (Boston: Little & Brown,
1931), 41-50 examine the reflexive self. The dynamic process of symbolic interaction between social
actors is detailed in Mead, Mind, Self, Society, 173-7, 192-6, 211-21; Andre J. Wiegert, Social Psychology:
A Sociological Approach through Interpretive Understanding (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1983), 138-40; Robert F. Bales, Sociological Implications of the Thought of George Herbert
Mead, American Journal of Sociology, 72 (1966), 539; William Lewis Troyer, Meads Social and
Functional Theory of Mind, American Sociological Review vol. 11 (Apr. 1946), 201; and Herbert Blumer,
Comment on Lewiss The Classic American Pragmatists As Forerunners to Symbolic Interactionism,
The Sociological Quarterly vol. 18 no. 2 (Spr. 1977), 286. See especially Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the
Id, authorized trans. Joan Riviere (London: Hogarth, 1947); and Max Weber, The Interpretation of Social
Realtiy, ed. and intro. J. E. T. Eldridge (London: Joseph, 1970). And Dominic La Capra, Rhetoric and
History, in History and Criticism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 15-44.

53

Walt Rostow falls squarely into this category. Rostow looked at the successful model of
the United States to identify the crucial social institutions upon which modern industrial
capitalism rested. Hence, he saw traditional countries without those conditions those
institutions as underdeveloped and conceived of ways artificially to accelerate the
development of the requisite conditions of modernity. Structuralists, on the other hand,
adopted the position that literature is an objective system governed by objective
laws. They believed that certain themes persist in literature regardless of the time or
place of their creation, or of the authors intent when creating a text. The appropriate
focus, they argued, lay in decoding meaning contained in the relations the text describes.
Language, it was felt, comprised a series of universal signs whose meaning could be
ascertained with proper textual analysis. The motivations of historical actors in these
models do not matter, since individuals do not need to be aware of the determinative
power of the class, institution, or culture that defines their actions.30
The ahistorical determinism of structuralism has led to a new critique popularly
labeled post-structuralism. More recent literary theory privileges those methods that
emphasize the inherent flexibility of meaning contained in written works. The shift
reflects a larger concern for the belief in the social construction of reality. Poststructuralists emphasize the dynamic process of human interaction and the variability of
differential experiences and meanings.

The key to understanding meaning lies in

30

Peter Burke, History and Social Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 110; Terry
Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 91; Burke,
History and Social Theory, 110-4; and Eagleton, Literary Theory, 91-126.

54

deconstructing the discourse of the participants.

Discourse encompasses the

communication process; it is indeterminate, arbitrary, variable, and, most of all, dynamic.

Post-structuralists perceive anything written as texts as subject to the same analytical
methods used in literary criticism. Since every written work is arbitrary, just as fictional
as a novel, so the argument goes, political (or economic or cultural or institutional),
analysis serves no useful purpose because it is but one of many often interrelated
meanings that discursive constructs may possess. Language, for post-structuralists, had
become objectified, merely a sequence of symbols; meaning could be found only in the
dynamic interaction that forged the meta-language discourse. Once again, though,
people tend to get lost in all this discursive process. The meaning becomes the focus, not
the historical context of the individuals who are doing the communicating.31
Michel Foucault and Joan Wallach Scott adopted the post-structuralist linguistic
turn to explore elite control of power and their ability to define social relations. By the
turn of the nineteenth century in France, Foucault writes, the gloomy festival of
punishment was dying out. He argues that an increasing concern for property broke
down traditional relations and required a more systematic and less arbitrary way of
enforcing political control. Foucault draws his conclusions not from traditional historical
methods, but from a post-structuralist reading of representations in French literary works,
government documents, personal accounts, and newspapers. From these he extrapolates
broadly to Western Europe and the United States. While Foucault has been chastised for

31

Burke, History and Social Theory, 150-8; Eagleton, Literary Theory, 127-50; and Burke,
History and Social Theory, 120.

55

this expansive penchant, Burke more accurately criticizes Foucault for ignoring the
mechanics of change in the process that he describes. An historian of early nineteenthcentury French labor, Joan Wallach Scott's own feminist politics have led her to argue
that gender supercedes class in analytical importance for labor history. Ava Baron, Gay
Gullickson, and Alice Kestler-Harris note the particular importance of language in
shaping, and being shaped by, the intricate interrelationships of evolving gendered social
relations and power dynamics in working-class history.

The key for Scott is the

production of knowledge. She argues that language, as a constitutive element of this

process, both mediates and reflects the historical context. In the nineteenth century,
gender definitions suffused class and politics. Gender, in this model, does not merely
interlace knowledge but also governs societal definitions, and, therefore, politics. While
Scott makes a compelling argument for the integral manner in which gender defines
political discourse, the inherently structural determinism of her model still limits if not
removes human agency.32
Bryan Palmer offers a trenchant critique of what he calls the post-structuralist
reification of language.

Palmer states that language is not life.

32

He insists that

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New
York: Vintage, 1977), 8. [1975]; Burke, History and Social Theory, 151; Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and
the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Ava Baron, Gender and Labor
History: Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future, in Work Gendered: Toward a New History of
American Labor, ed. Ava Baron (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 1-46; Gay Gullickson,
Commentary:New Labor History from the Perspective of a Women's Historian, in Rethinking Labor
History, ed. Leonard R. Berlanstein (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 200-13; and Alice
Kestler-Harris, A New Agenda for American Labor History:A Gendered Analysis and the Question of
Class, in Perspectives on American Labor History: The Problems of Synthesis, eds. J. Carroll Moody and
Alice Kestler-Harris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 217-34.

56

interpretations of history must be based on analysis of material reality, class, and class
struggle. He writes that historical materialism's attention to the importance of language
predates what he decries as an often slavish attachment to discourse. Palmer argues that
E. P. Thompson's understanding of the English working class depended upon language
and its ability to reveal the structure of hegemony in English society.

Palmer

thoroughly chastizes Foucault's ahistoricism in Discipline and Punish. The reliance on

language, not as a factor in the construction of social relations but as its determinant,
traps Foucault into a never-ending reductive cycle of discourse/power/knowledge. In
so doing, Foucault egregiously dismisses the subjectivity/agency/activity within which
power undoubtedly lived. Palmer takes Joan Wallach Scott to task as well. He argues
that, in seeking to avoid the Marxist economism and the radical essentialism of
feminism, Scott overstates her case. Palmer calls for a return to the method of E. P.
Thompson, who appreciates the ability of language to reveal the dynamics of class
relations.

While Palmer wants a return to a different determinism, his pointed

commentary highlights a fundamental flaw of post-structuralist inquiry: the excision of

human action.33
The insistence that historical texts are subject to a plethora, perhaps even an
infinite number, of meanings and interpretations has roused the ire of a leading historian
of Latin America. Florencia Mallon challenges the utility of post-structuralist methods

33

Bryan D. Palmer, Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of
Social History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), xiii-xiv; and ibid., 69. See E. P. Thompson,
The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Viking, 1963). Palmer, Descent into Discourse, 28.

57

like those that have been applied to studies of peasant resistance in India. Authors such
as Ranjit Guha contend that insurgency literature on India has failed to appreciate the
extent to which elite perceptions of India's subaltern peoples colored official
documentation, the very sources upon which historians rely. Drawing on Barthes, Guha
utilizes structuralist semiotic logic to analyze the language of historical texts to produce a
post-structuralist interpretation of the imbedded code within the imperial discourse. He
concludes that even radical modern authors have succumbed to what he calls the code of
counter insurgency, and that their works have been contaminated by culturally loaded
descriptions which ignore the often complex processes that motivated millions of people.
Mallon, though, argues that texts should be viewed as literary documents to be probed on
their own terms, as well as constructs of a particular period. Like any good historian, she
rightly decries the privileging of textual analysis and literary sources that cannot
adequately replicate the necessary historical context derived from empirical research.
Kevin Kenny does precisely that when he concentrates on how contemporary perceptions
and depictions of violence attributed to Irish miners illuminate much about ethnocentrism
and class warfare in mid-nineteenth century Pennsylvania. Now, he has a foil to explore
how the life of the miners had to interact with the mine owners code.34

34

Florencia Mallon, The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies: Perspectives from Latin
American History, American Historical Review vol. 99 no. 5 (Dec. 1994), 1491-1515; Ranjit Guha, On
Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India, in Selected Subaltern Studies, eds. Ranjit Guha and
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 37-44; and idem, The Prose of
Counterinsurgency, in Selected Subaltern Studies, 45-84; Guha, Prose of Counterinsurgency, 70;
Mallon, Promise and Dilemma, 1508; and Kevin Kenny, Making the Molly McGuires (New York:
Oxford, 1998).

58

As a constitutive element of the historical process, language both reflects and

mediates the historical context. Studying the language used in the decision-making
process that led to U.S. counterinsurgency training affords the opportunity to re-examine
the ideological assumptions that underlay the Latin American policy of the United States.
The constellation of ideas, notions, and beliefs that over time in American culture have
ascribed inferior and frightening qualities to racial and racialized others a language, an
ideology of race has dramatically shaped the course and content of Americas foreign
policy. That policy has in turn redounded across the centuries to profoundly influence
those very conceptions of race. Understanding the place of race ideology in this history,
therefore, helps us to understand the confluence of economic and security considerations
that shaped the evolving cold war, because it explains the ease with which the United
States its people and, most important, its policymakers embraced such an allencompassing ideology of anti-Communism that dismissed out of hand the legitimacy
of non-white peoples and their historical contexts across the globe. So when United
States policymakers turned to Latin America during the cold war, individually and
collectively, they drew on those profoundly paternalistic notions to implement military
assistance and economic development.35

35

For race ideology, see Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth
Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Howard Winant, Racial Conditions: Politics,
Theory, Comparisons (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 37-44; Evelyn Brooks
Higgenbotham, African-American Women's History and the Meta Language of Race, Signs: Journal of
Women in Culture and Society vol. 17 no. 1 (1992), 251-274; David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness:
Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991); and Barbara Jeanne Fields,
Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America, The New Left Review no. 181 (May/June
1990), 95-118.

59

CONCLUSION
The Cuban Revolution proved to be the watershed of U.S.-Latin American
relations in the cold war and led a generation of policymakers to work assiduously to
prevent its recurrence. The language used to justify counter guerrilla training, however,
reveals the extent to which anti-Communism served to reduce political opposition in
Latin America to a technical problem.

World War II transformed America as it

transformed the world political and economic order. In the immediate post-war period,
the United States experienced a unique moment of unparalleled economic, political, and
military preeminence, one that David Harvey contends fostered in the United States the
belief in linear progress, absolute truths, and rational planning of ideal social orders
under standardized conditions of knowledge and production.

Americans in this

evanescent period possessed an implicit faith in technology as the salvation for the world,
and many held an unshakeable conviction that America was its savior. Development
came to be understood as a technological process of modernization, a scientific problem
to be solved. Disruption could only be the product of outside interference, in this case
Communists and Cubans; experts in counterinsurgency would solve the problem of
Communist subversion. The very language of development reflected and perpetuated
these implicit assumptions.

With counterinsurgency policy, the United States

consciously employed psychological warfare as a technical term with security threats

to be solved with appropriate management skills and training. Hence, policy makers
during the cold war effectively obscured the ideological nature of each component of
counterinsurgency training.

They did so because Ch Guevaras Guerrilla Warfare

60

offered a competing discourse that threatened to undermine the new axiom of economic
development and American influence.

The School of the Americas became an

instrument the United States used to ensure that Latin America had the requisite skills to
enforce internal security and stymie Communist subversion while development
proceeded apace.36
The U.S. Army School of the Americas serves as a useful interpretive vehicle.
Human behavior is often predictable and repetitive; but it is not inevitable.
Consequently, historians have to devise ways to explain behavior that occurs in a
particular place and time.

Social scientists prefer to use structuralist models and

typologies that generally do not depend on context in order to categorize events, groups,
and collective and individual behavior.

Historians are not above utilizing a few

generalizations in their efforts to interpret past human interaction. And that is precisely
what history is interpretation. Because historians seek to understand human interaction
within its context, they must try to make sense of what is, intrinsically, unknowable.
Instead, by asking questions of the available evidence, historians attempt to make use
of the past to meet some present purpose.37 The purpose of this endeavor is to make use
of an examination of the U.S. Army School of the Americas to reveal some of the

36

David Harvey, The Condition of Post Modernity: An Inquiry into the Origins of Cultural
Change (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 35. See Escobar, Encountering Development, for the
development discourse.
37

See Warren I. Susman, History and the American Intellectual: The Use of the Usable Past, in
Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York:
Pantheon, 1984), 7-26.

61

important themes of U.S.-Latin American military and foreign policy during the cold
war, such as: the formation of national security policy; the interplay of domestic politics
and foreign policy; the role of the president in defining that policy; the interpretation and
shaping of policy by the men and women who served in those administrations; the
manner and purpose for which Latin Americans, especially members of their armed
forces, partook of U.S. military policy and, in turn, the repercussions to their societies. In
this case, the school is the interpretive wedge, the pry into the past. Through it, we learn
that the School of the Americas filled only a nominal role in the U.S. Army training and
doctrine command, and that economic development failed as a hegemonic project
because successive presidents after John F. Kennedy did not give it priority in U.S.-Latin
American policy.
But how historians define the useable past depends in large part on the
analytical tools they marshal. The literature on U.S. military training and policy has
benefited from historians who have emphasized economic and security considerations.
Alone and together, those investigations have demonstrated the power of American
hegemony and the complex interplay between the United States and Latin America.
Studies of the Latin American military reveal their active and conscious participation in
the process, drawing on their own notions of obligation and nationalism. Generally,
however, the security/economics dynamic has obscured the legacy of American
paternalism on United States foreign and military relations with Latin America. Race is a
social construct. Like gender and ethnicity and class race derives its meaning from
human thought and deed within a particular place and time. Each socially generated
62

conception in turn, and in concert, resonates profoundly with past shared meanings of
race, class, gender, and ethnicity. Because it subsumes each of these categories in the
historical context of United States history, paternalism becomes a category of analysis
that has to be employed. Understand, this is not to advance paternalism as the new metanarrative. Instead, given the history of western expansion, given the history of race
ideology in the United States, given the lasting legacy of patriarchy and ethnocentrism,
paternalism offers another tool to help provide a more useable view of U.S. foreign
policy.

63

Chapter 1:
Radios, Heavy Equipment, and Cream Puffs:
United States Army Training of Latin American Military, 1939-1958
American desires to improve security of the Panama Canal during World War II
had the unintended consequence of transforming the nations role in the training of Latin
American military. The fitful and limited training offered by the United States just
before and during the war proved enormously popular among Latin American military
establishments. Following the cessation of hostilities, the United States cemented the
policy adopted during the war by establishing the Inter-American Defense Board in 1942
to coordinate U.S. direction of hemispheric defense. The Panama Canal and the sea lanes
of the Caribbean, however, remained the only true strategic concerns in the Western
Hemisphere, and once assured of their integrity, the Truman and Eisenhower
administrations concentrated on Asia and Europe as the true areas of geopolitical
significance.

Latin America rarely mattered in the early cold war, and then only

peripherally. The officers who ran the fledgling U.S. mission in the Canal Zone to train
selected members of Latin Americas military, however, sought to take advantage of the
growing tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In doing so, they fought the
fiscal penury of the Department of Defense, the bias of the Department of the Army, and
the competing efforts of U.S. military missions in Central and, especially, South
America. Commanders in Panama also took care to ensure that the training offered at Ft.
Gulick in the Canal Zone at the U.S. Army Caribbean School, founded in 1949, did not
64

challenge the preferred emphasis on military missions and U.S. armed forces schools in
the United States.

Instead, the school provided limited technical training to small

numbers of military personnel from various Latin American nations at the request of
those nations. To preserve their bureaucratic existence within the now vast military
infrastructure of the United States defense establishment, the school championed its
unique ability to influence admittedly minor players in a global concern, but in a
strategically vital location.38
The USARCARIB School represented but part of a defense policy that used
military training as a means to forge greater ties with members of a powerful Latin
American institution the military. The Latin American military became an increasingly
decisive political participant in Latin America during the course of the twentieth century.
By the close of the nineteenth century, the elites of Latin America had decried their
nations relatively subordinate position in the world economy and were pressing for
progress. That desire did not wane with the onset of the new century; instead, it grew.
The Latin American military, long an active and influential player in the politics of the
region, relied upon missions from France and Prussia in its efforts to modernize its
military establishments in the early part of the twentieth century. Those missions evolved
in a manner that stimulated, rather than precluded, political action in the manner called
professional militarism and reinforced the perceived legitimacy, certainly among
members of the military, of political action by the armed forces. Most of all, the military

38

John Child, Unequal Alliance: The Inter-American Military System, 1938-1978 (Boulder:
Westview, 1980), 40-4.

65

saw itself, institutionally, as divorced from the political process and therefore able to
solve national problems without succumbing to politics and their attendant venality. The
Great Depression proved especially devastating to the nations of Latin America, and the
failure of political leaders to find an answer led Latin American militaries, in nation after
nation, to insert themselves into the political process, often violently. Central America
Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and South America Argentina, Bolivia, Chile,
Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil all witnessed military coups (often
several) of varying success.

Only in Venezuela, Honduras and Costa Rica did the

military not launch a takeover. And in Mexico, a succession of revolutionary generals

served as president before 1940. By the beginning of World War II, the militaries of
Latin America had become increasingly convinced, individually and collectively, that
only they alone, as an institution, possessed the requisite morality and institutional vigor
necessary to ensure national integrity and economic progress.

And they welcomed

exposure to the tactical superiority maintained by the United States.39

The army training at Ft. Gulick in Panama reflected the new priorities of the
hemispheric defense posture the United States adopted during the early years of the cold

39

See Frederick Nunn, An Overview of the European Military Missions to Latin America,
Military Affairs, vol. 39 (Feb. 1975), 1-7; Brian Loveman, For La Patria: Politics and the Armed Forces in
Latin America (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1999), 63-100; Brian Loveman and Thomas R. Davies,
Jr., eds., The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military of Latin America, 2d rev. ed. (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1992), 17-88; Edwin Lieuwin, Arms and Politics in Latin America, rev. ed. (New York:
Praeger), 1967; and John J. Johnson, The Military and Society in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1964), 62-75. Loveman, La Patria, xi-xxvii; and Loveman and Davies, Politics of
Antipolitics, 3-14, 89-162. See also Johnson, Military and Society in Latin America, 93-152 for a more
complementary view. Willard Barber and C. Neale Ronning, Internal Security and Military Power:
Counterinsurgency and Civic Action in Latin America (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1966),
Appendix A, Illegal and Unscheduled Changes of Heads of State, Part I, By Country, [1-15].

66

war.

The historically ad hoc nature of United States policy toward Latin America

reinforced the intermittent nature of U.S. training of Latin American military prior to
World War II. The United States Army, Navy and Marines played a direct role in the
affairs of many nations in the Caribbean and Central America during U.S. intervention
between 1898-1933.

Local military commanders, who suffered from logistical and

communication impediments and from a lack of concerted interest on the part of

Washington, D.C., often decided policy on the spot in the areas under their command.
Undersecretary of State for the American Republics J. Ruben Clarks memorandum of
1930 laid the diplomatic groundwork for an end to U.S. military intervention and
occupation in Latin America when he argued that there existed no justification under
international law for the practice and pattern of United States intervention in the
preceding decades.

President Herbert Hoover certainly did not dismiss American

security considerations when he embraced the essentials of the Clark Memorandum.

Instead, Hoover sought a less intrusive policy that would enhance American business
opportunities and reduce the costs borne by the federal government. Led administratively
by Sumner Welles and Nelson Rockefeller, a much more involved policy expanded and
flourished under Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he launched the Good Neighbor Policy
in 1933. Part of the United Statess effort during the 1930s included a conscious effort to
stymie further European influence in South America, especially that of Germany. But
that desire did not extend to offering the military of the region consistent training at the
hands of the United States military establishment. The onset of hostilities in Europe,
however, spurred a bit more fitful action. And the post war-nuclear confrontation with
67

the Soviet Union meant that the United States could not afford uncertainty in the Western
Hemisphere. U.S. armed services training of Latin American military became a useful
tool in securing regional cooperation. In the years before the Cuban Revolution, the
USARCARIB School was a small part of that program.40

40

See Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (New
York: Basic Books, 2002), 129-252; Thomas Schoonover, The United States in Central America, 18601911: Episodes of Imperialism and Imperial Rivalry in the World System (Durham: Duke University Press,
1991); Richard H. Collin, Theodore Roosevelts Caribbean: The Panama Canal, the Monroe Doctrine, and
the Latin American Context (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988); and David Healy,
Driven to Hegemony: The United States in the Caribbean, 1889-1917 (Madison: University of Wisconsin,
Press, 1988). For specific cases see Robert E. Quirk, An Affair of Honor: Woodrow Wilson and the
Occupation of Veracruz (New York: Norton, 1962); Frederich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe,
the United States, and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). Combined,
Jonathan Brown, Oil and Revolution in Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); and Linda
B. Hall, Oil, Banks, and Politics: The United States and Postrevolutionary Mexico (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1995), provide a thorough accounting of the United States, oil barons, and the Mexican
Revolution. See also Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934, foreword Stephen
Solarz (New Brunzwick: Rutgers University Press, 1995). [1971]; Brenda Gayle Plummer, Haiti and the
Great Power, 1902-1915 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992); and Neil Macaulay, The
Sandino Affair (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1967). On Cuba see H. Wayne Morgan, Americas Road to Empire:
The War with Spain and Overseas Expansion (New York: Wiley, 1965); Philip S. Foner, Spanish-CubanAmerican War and the Birth of American Imperialism, 1895-1898, 2 vols. (New York: Monthly Review,
1972); Julio Le Riverend, La repblica: dependencia y revolucin, 4th ed. rev. (Havana: Instituto Cubano
Libro, 1975); Jos M. Hernndez, Cuba and the United States: Intervention and Militarism, 1868-1933
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); John L. Offner, An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the
United States and Spain Over Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); and Aline
Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912 (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1995). Lester D. Langley, The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the
Caribbean, 1898-1934 (Chicago: The Dorsey Press, 1983). Alexander DeConde, Herbert Hoover's Latin
American Policy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951). Bryce Wood, The Making of the Good
Neighbor Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961); Lloyd C. Gardner, Economic Aspects of
New Deal Diplomacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964); Green, Containment of Latin
America; Irwin F. Gellman, Good Neighbor Diplomacy: United States Policies in Latin America, 19331945 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979); David F. Haglund, Latin America and the
Transformation of U.S. Strategic Thought, 1936-1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1984); and Frederick Pike, FDRs Good Neighbor Policy: Sixty Years of Generally Gentle Chaos (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1995). Frank D. McCann, Jr., The Brazilian-American Alliance, 1937-1945
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973).

68

LATIN AMERICA, JAPAN, AND THE CANAL, 1939-1943

The security of the Panama Canal remained the primary concern for the U.S.
Army during World War II.

Military planners believed that practically the only

objective of an enemy attack against the Canal Zone would be the Canal itself, with the
purpose of capturing it for the enemys own use. When President Roosevelt declared a
national emergency in 1939, ordering the armed forces of the United States to upgrade
the nations defensive posture, the Canal Zone possessed few defensive facilities. Only
the very limited capabilities of Ft. Amador stood as an impediment to enemy attack.
Built in 1920 to defend the Pacific entrance, this facility housed the command structure
of the various incarnations of the U.S. Army presence in the Canal until 1984. The site
included a few rudimentary runways.

By 1938, the army had constructed a more

established air base named Ft. Albrook near the same site. During World War II, the
army added a series of barracks, hangers, out-buildings, and runways, along with an air
warning station. Given the logistical difficulties inherent in any full-scale attack, that
must perforce come by sea, planners concentrated on defending against an effort to
impede American use of the Canal. Consequently, they expected a commando raid as
the likeliest scenario. Planners remained wary of German and Japanese communities in
Central America, and in Guatemala in particular, as a potential source of guerrilla attack,

69

voicing a conviction that their mere presence presented a devious fifth-column threat to
the Canals security.41
The U.S. Army therefore sought to create a rapid-deployment, small-unit force of
exceptional standing and ability to defend the Canal. According to army historians,
training had suffered before the war, and they report that commanders complained that
many soldiers who arrived in Panama did not possess even basic training. The extensive
use of troops in construction as part of a broad effort to expand defensive facilities,
housing, and roadworks, further hampered the ability of the United States to defend the
Canal. Consequently, the Caribbean Defense Command launched a training program to
acquaint troops with conditions in the Zone. Dubbed the Panama Mobile Force, this
unit always had a definite mission which took precedence . . . the protection of the
Panama Canal. The U.S. Army restricted training to the dry season so as not to expose
the troops unnecessarily to malaria. Additionally, the United States worked to acquaint
soldiers with the dangers of chemical warfare, deemed particularly likely in any attack on
the Canal.

Trainers, however, had to fight the Command Structure as well as the

elements in their efforts to create the Mobile Force, battling to take students to Trinidad

41

Historical Section, Caribbean Defense Command, War Plans and Defense, Caribbean Defense
Command, 1946, HMF, 8-2.8 AE C1, 5; Historical Section, Panama Canal Department, Training,
Panama Mobile Force and Security Command, July 1946, HMF, 8-2.9 AF, Part IV, 1; Cecil L. Munden,
Construction and Real Estate Activities in the Caribbean Defense Command, vol. 2, Construction of
Individual Bases, Historical Section, Caribbean Defense Command, HMF, 1 July 1946, 8-2.8 AL V2, 40-1;
ibid., 8; ibid., 429-53; Historical Section, War Plans and Defense, 6; Historical Section, Panama Canal
Department, Caribbean Defense Command, History of the Panama Canal Department, vol. 1, Introduction
and Historical Background, 1903-1939, 1947, HMF, 8-2.9 AA V.1 C.1, 80-9. See also Historical Section,
Panama Canal Department, Caribbean Defense Command, History of the Panama Canal Department, vol.
3, The War Period, 1941-45, 1947, HMF, 8-2.9 AA V.3. C.1, 260-83. Center for Military History,
Washington, DC. [Hereafter cited as CMH].

70

for exercises. British troops brought their colonial experience to bear and joined in the
jungle warfare training in Panama and Trinidad. Small-unit tactics in the main were the
focus of these programs. By 1941, the Mobile Force had become the core of the Jungle
training program of the army, which later sent many men from the United States and
Great Britain to Burma during World War II.42
The spirit of hemispheric cooperation led the Caribbean Defense Command to
funnel requests for training from Latin American militaries to Panama. In February 1939
the Commanding General, Panama Department, Lt. General David I. Stone, initiated a
series of courtesy visits of military representatives of various Latin American countries.
The United States military attachs to Latin American countries would extend the
invitations. The visits represented a deliberate effort to improve United States relations
with neighboring nations and to promote better understanding with their armed forces.
Army historians report that these courtesy visits came at a time when Axis and Falangist
propagandists in Latin America were reviving old distrusts of the Colossus of the North
and fanning the flames of hatred for the United States in the breasts of highly sensitive

42

Historical Section, Training, July 1946, 4-6; ibid., 1; Historical Section, Panama Canal
Department, Caribbean Defense Command, History of the Panama Canal Department, vol. 2, Preparation
for War, 1939-41, 1947, HMF. 8-2.9 AA V.2. C.1; Historical Section, History, vol. 2, Preparation for War,
1939-41; Historical Section, Training, July 1946, 1; and Historical Section, History, vol. 3, War Period,
1941-45, 139-52; Historical Section, Training, July 1946, 2-3. CMH. See cable dated 13 July 1943 in
RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Army-Intelligence Project Decimal File, 1941-1945, Box 821, FN
350.2; 16 Oct. 1942, Summary of Report of Jungle Platoon Training of the 33rd Infantry at Trinidad,
B.W.I. during the Period July 12, to August 22, 1942, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Comands,
Caribbean Defense Command, 1941-1948, Box 115, FN 353 Jungle Warfare Training (Trinidad). National
Archives and Records Administration II, College Park Maryland. [Hereafter cited as NARA II]. Office of
the Staff Secretary, Caribbean Defense Command, Training in the Caribbean Defense Command, 19411946, 1948, HMF, 8-2.8 AC, 10-14; and Historical Section, Training, July 1946, 7-9. CMH.

71

and nationalistic Latin American officer corps. They go on to note that the recent U.S.
occupation of Caribbean and Central American nations had bred an easily inflamed
resentment, especially among the military.43
A number of Central and South American nations responded to U.S. overtures.
Guatemala became the first nation to accept the invitation when it sent a flight of ten
officers of the Guatemalan Air Corps to visit Panama and the Zone, where they received
a tour of the facilities. The War Department later felt it would be good for the Puerto
Rican military to be given similar visits. In April, Colombia sent a similar delegation and
then in November Ecuador visited, also to observe U.S. air corps facilities.

The

Ecuadorans requested some training by the United States, and General Stone devised that
some short course be offered on their next visit in early 1940 to include Air Corps
methods and procedures in administration and supply, engineering, and tactical
operations. By mid 1940, such extended courtesy visits had become more regular,
generally inspired by State Department representatives in the countries in order to foster
good will. Early visits continued to be rather ad hoc, with a few short courses run by the
air mechanics in supply and operations. When the Peruvian military requested more
formal training, and Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and Ecuador signed
on, the army responded. Again, the primary training offered was in technical matters,
from auto mechanics to parachute rolling.44

43

Office of the Staff Secretary, Training, 1941-1946, 14. CMH.

44

Historical Section, Panama Canal Department, Training of Latin American Military Personnel
in the Panama Canal Department, in Preliminary Historical Study, Panama Canal Department -- Training,

72

The Caribbean Defense Command continued to keep abreast of the politics of the
various nations in the region, if only for security purposes. Situation Reports were a
staple at CDC headquarters, and intelligence officers reported in the Fall of 1940 that the
squabbling in Mexico over the recent election had subsided with only minor sporadic
armed clashes . . . in northern Mexico since September 1st and the election of General
Manuel vila Camacho. More conservative than his predecessor, Lzaro Crdenas, the
report went on to note that the new President-Elect had openly announced his devotion to
Catholicism, which encouraged conservative elements to believe that his administration
will be divested of existing Communistic influences and that a regime more favorable to
property rights throughout the country may be expected. Situation Reports from 1943
characterized the political scene in the Caribbean and Central America as favorable and
concentrated on the ability of the army to ensure the security of the Canal without the
threat of instability. The military coup in Bolivia in 1943 did impede participation of that
nations military in training in Panama but did not represent a strategic threat to the
security of the Canal. To the contrary, military rule was deemed salutary to the primary
mission of the Caribbean Defense Command. In addition to concern for the domestic

vol. 2, Department Schools, HMF 8-2.9 AM, 47-53; Office of the Staff Secretary, Training, 1941-1946, 1722; and ibid. See also Maj. John Baker and Col. Charles D. Carle, Historical Section, Caribbean
Command, United States Missions and Bases in Peru and the Caribbean Defense Command -- Period of
World War II, HMF, 8-2.8 BF; and Historical Section, Caribbean Command, Cooperation and
Collaboration of the Republic of Colombia with the United States in the Second World War, HMF, 8-2.8
BF. CMH.

73

political situation in the nations of the region, intelligence officers kept staff apprised of
the weather, just in case.45
The transition of power in Cuba in 1944 revealed the impatience with which staff
in Panama viewed Latin governments. Following the election of Ramn Grau San
Martn as president in Cuba in 1944, the U.S. Army reported that relations between the
United States and Cuba had changed radically. Specifically, the debate centered on the
post-war use of Batista Air Field, a field constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers for which the United States and Cuba had signed a Secret Agreement giving
the United States the right to construct roads and other ancillary services as it deemed
necessary. Despite the previously cordial relations with the Cuban military on this
subject, after the election Grau decided that the bases should revert to Cuba and not to let
the U.S. have further use of them following the cessation of hostilities in Europe and
Asia. The official U.S. Army history of relations with Cuba during the war notes quite
acerbically that Cubas seemingly obvious inability to maintain the fields was not
enough to deter Cuban officials of playing their own peculiar brand of politics involving
delay and indecision. President Grau then became rather insistent that only Cuban
troops were desired in Cuba. Since the United States wanted to use these bases for
heavy bombers in the postwar years, this attitude posed a problem. The matter was

45

Sherman Miles, memorandum, 1 Oct. 1940, Situation in the Caribbean Area, No. 5, RG 319
Records of the Army Staff, Army-Intelligence Project Decimal File, 1941-1945, Box 49, FN 336 Caribbean
Defense Command thru 10-1-40. NARA II.

74

finally resolved to the satisfaction of the Caribbean Defense Command, but not without
reinforcing, in their minds, the illegitimate intractability of Latin American politicians.46
The U.S. Army found its flexibility taxed in the training of its Latin American
counterparts in Panama during World War II. Since the Caribbean Defense Command
had not received additional personnel for the Latin American students, the army had to
superimpose the activity upon the existing departmental and command training
programs by adding Latin American sections. Washington enjoyed the benefits accrued
by training, but the Joint Chiefs did not want to pay for it. The army instructors also
initially balked at giving courses in Spanish but later became advocates of the idea.
Occasionally, Washington took notice, such as when, under orders from Hap Arnold, the
War Department arranged for a squadron of Brazilians to be trained in Panama in
response to Brazils request to be part of the war effort. Working with a variety of
nations led to some interesting decisions. For example, Chileans were required to be paid
in gold a rather hefty raise for them which army historians derisively note led to
spending sprees . . . of soap. Their enthusiasm consequently led to the loss of their
commissary privileges at the Panama rest and recreational facilities. Still another report
considered the students from Chile sixty-six officers and thirty-one enlisted personnel

46

Historical Section, Caribbean Defense Command, Cuba, 1946, HMF, 8-2.8 BN C. 1, 59-60.

CMH.

75

in 1944 as a whole . . . more intelligent and industrious than any other students
received in Panama for training.47
Training of Latin American military also required the U.S. Army to confront its
discriminatory practices. When the United States began incorporating troops from the
Puerto Rican National Guard (PRANG) in 1944, army personnel in Panama complained
that training did not progress as hoped because of the language barrier, and low-mental
capacity of troops, 37.9 percent of whom were classified as Average Learners and an
additional 47.9 percent of whom were categorized as Slow Learners or Very Slow
Learners. PRANG soldiers were given training, but the army noted that the prevalent
illiteracy required the trainers to be sensitive to their pride when instructing them. As a
matter of policy, soldiers from Haiti and the Dominican Republic received training from
the Antilles Department under the Caribbean Defense Command in Puerto Rico. An
army historian notes that in 1944 two negro officers were accepted by trainers in
Panama for Field Artillery training, as the Antilles Department was unable to give the
instruction. This did not pose a racial problem . . . as these officers were trained by an
Insular Battalion that was in the field most of the time.

Insular Battalions were

composed of soldiers from Puerto Rico and U.S. possession in the lesser Antilles. The
historian notes for the record that Insular troops, through their racial background, have
no feeling as far as color is concerned. Troops from Cuba also stirred animosity. While

47

Historical Section, Training of Latin American Military Personnel, Training, vol. 2,

Department Schools, 69; ibid., 59; Office of the Staff Secretary, Training, 1941-1946, 15; and Historical
Section, Training of Latin American Military Personnel, Training, vol. 2, Department Schools, 75. CMH.

76

the army historian of record writes that there was only a minimum of racial
discrimination existent in Cuba, some of the personnel sent to Panama by that country
had negro blood.

U.S. Army trainers objected, as did some students from other

countries. Still, the army went forth with training, equitably it is argued, and Black and
mulatto Cuban personnel were accepted on an equal status, although reluctantly. The
report concludes that The color problem, however, was mentioned to the military attach
in Havana, who was responsible for selecting Cuban military for training by the United
States in Panama, and there was no further cause for complaint, presumably because
the attach excluded non-white students.48
LATIN AMERICAN TRAINING IN PANAMA, 1943-47
The Caribbean Command saw in the informal training program an opportunity to
influence potential leaders of Latin American societies. General Brett, the commanding
general of the U.S. Army Caribbean, believed the courtesy visits provided an entroit to
the Latin American military and the general knew, perhaps better than most in the U.S.
armed services, the often pivotal role played by the military institutions in Latin
American political systems. By the spring of 1943 the original idea of token hemispheric
cooperation had developed into a formal training program. Many of the early contacts
were aimed at the development of goodwill among the Central American countries and
Colombia. This continued to drive the army and, given the success of the missions, the

48

Historical Section, Training, July 1946, 31-2; Office of the Staff Secretary, Training, 19411946, 17-22; and Historical Section, Training of Latin American Military Personnel, Training, vol. 2,
Department Schools, 79. CMH.

77

Latin American Training Center was established inconspicuously on March 15, 1943.
General Brett, the new commander of the Caribbean Defense Command, was glad to give
the training his blessing as he worked to fulfill his primary responsibility, the defense of
the Canal.49
Initially, the U.S. Army sought to provide Latin American military with the
requisite instruction for the maintenance of Lend-Lease equipment, in particular that from
the Army Air Force. Success led to expansion of the technical training programs, such
asmotor mechanics, Aw gunnery, Aw fire control, armament, radio maintenance,
mathematics review . . . internal combustion engine operation . . . radar and searchlight
. . . radio operators. The first infantry training came at the request of Nicaragua, and in
February of 1943 four officers from the National Guard arrived in Panama to receive
infantry training along with U.S. troops, with the intent that they would take their new
knowledge back to their armed forces. El Salvador did not send students to Panama until
1944, when a limited number of students was enrolled in the program, with one officer
and sixteen enlisted men receiving training at the Air School at Ft. Albrook. The army
then decided that Latin American personnel, including the Mobile Force and Security
Command, should be sent to all of the U.S. schools in the Zone to receive infantry/jungle
training. Members of the Nicaraguan Military Academy received jungle warfare training
in Panama beginning in 1944. The Panama Department of the Army by 1 April 1944

49

Office of the Staff Secretary, Training, 1941-1946, 14-5; Historical Section, Panama Canal
Department, Caribbean Defense Command, History of the Panama Canal Department, vol. 4, The
Reconversion Period, 1945-1947, 1947, HMF, 8-2.9 AA V.4. C.1, 72, 74; Historical Section, Training of
Latin American Military Personnel, Training, vol. 2, Department Schools, 55. CMH.

78

. . . had graduated 90 officers and 108 enlisted men from various courses. Added to this
total were fifty officers of the Colombian War College, who received two weeks of
instruction with the Mobile Force. By January 1946, that number increased to 423 and
eleven different countries had been represented in attendance. The overwhelming bulk
of the students came from countries along the spine of the Andes: Peru (96), Colombia
(76), Bolivia (72), Ecuador (50), Venezuela (37), and Chile (25).

Nicaragua and

Guatemala sent eighteen soldiers each, and El Salvador nine. Cuba added sixteen. The
United States flew in students from all over Latin America and the official report of the
program notes that the schools were found to bring personnel of the several countries
together in common bonds of friendship, while the relations between pupils and
instructors also promoted better understanding between the countries.50
The U.S. Army command in Panama consistently extolled the ability of U.S.
military training to effect positive military relations. General Brett pushed for extended
military missions to Latin American countries to cement military relations and to enhance
the prestige of the training offered by Canal schools. In 1944, the American Republics
Program, which included students from the militaries of Chile, Colombia, Guatemala,

50

Historical Section, Panama Canal Department, vol. 4, Reconversion Period, 1945-1947, 72-3;
Office of the Staff Secretary, Training, 1941-1946, 19; Historical Section, Training of Latin American
Military Personnel, Training, vol. 2, Department Schools, 54; ibid., 80; ibid., 55; Office of the Staff
Secretary, Training, 1941-1946, 48-9; Historical Section, Training of Latin American Military Personnel,
Training, vol. 2, Department Schools, 57; Historical Section, Panama Canal Department, vol. 4,
Reconversion Period, 1945-1947, 74; and ibid. See also request for training and travel in RG 319 Records
of the Army Staff, Army-Intelligence Project Decimal File, 1946-1948, Box 823-8, FN 350.2 (12-15-41).
NARA II; Historical Section, Panama Canal Department, vol, 4, Reconversion Period, 1945-1947, 73,
CMH; and RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Army-Intelligence Project Decimal File, 1946-1948, Box
829, FN 350.2, (6-17-40), which contains requests for training from Latin America back to 1939. NARA II.

79

Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, represented another outstanding service of the

Command to foreign nations. This program gave cadres training to take back to the six
participating countries in the operation, care, maintenance, characteristics, and use of the
war material allotted under the surplus program of the United States. Despite the
difficulties reported by army personnel in working with Cuban students and the Cuban
government, the official post-war assessment of U.S.-Cuban military relations during
World War II noted that Cuban participation in U.S. Army training programs in the Canal
Zone had not only taught United States methods and proper care of United States
equipment, obtained by Cuba largely through Lend-Lease arrangements, but had also
done much to promote friendliness between the two countries. Satisfaction has been
expressed with the existing training program that promise[d] to do much in the future
to develop closer friendship between the United States and Cuba. The official history of
the Panama Canal District goes on to wax rather rhapsodic about the ability of the
Commander to foster inter-hemispheric relations, despite the spread of undemocratic
ideology among some classes of persons. The report further cited that the importance
of the Canal to both hemispheric and inter-ocean commerce remained unchanged in
importance, and it was the crossroad for inter-American solidarity and collaboration.
Of course, the army historian made no mention of how the United States had acquired the
Canal Zone.51

51

Office of the Staff Secretary, Training, 1941-1946, 30; ibid., 49-50; Historical Section,
Caribbean Defense Command, Panama Canal Department Latin American Training Center, in Cuba,
1946, HMF, 8-2.8 BN C. 1; and Historical Section, Panama Canal Department, vol. 4, Reconversion
Period, 1945-1947 76. CMH.

80

The exigencies of training Latin American military, however, threatened the

ability of the army in Panama to continue this mission. U.S. training proved popular
among some of the regions militaries. Countries in Central America, the Caribbean, and
the Andean nations in particular took advantage of the training offered in Panama.
Brazil, Mexico, and the nations of the Southern Cone, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile,
however, rarely did travel to Panama during World War II. As a matter of practicality,
the army discovered that the apprentice system commonly employed in technical training
did not afford the Latin American students sufficient training since few instructors spoke
Spanish. Hence, staff at the headquarters of the Panama Canal Department at Ft. Amador
decided to establish a separate school for Latin American students. Initially, in late 1944,
this program received the designation Military Training Center, CDC-PCD, the
Caribbean Defense Command, Panama Canal Department. Continuing demand from
various nations in South and Central America and the Caribbean prompted the
commander, General Brett, to seek a more permanent facility. To do so, the general
needed official recognition from the War Department.

And since Latin American

governments routinely could not afford to send their troops to the Canal, the general
needed something else to defray expenses money.52

52

Christy to Chief of Staff, memorandum, 14 Aug. 1945, Authorization for Military Training
Center, Panama Canal Department, RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Army-Intelligence Project
Decimal File, 1941-1945, Box 822, FN 350.2 (12-15-41). NARA II; Historical Section, Training of Latin
American Military Personnel, Training, vol. 2, Department Schools, 85-8. CMH; Christy to Chief of Staff,
Authorization for Military Training Center, (12-15-41). NARA II; Historical Section, Training of Latin
American Military Personnel, Training, vol. 2, Department Schools, 110-1. CMH; and Freeman to [Maj.
Gen. Brett] COMGENCDC, memorandum, 7 Sept. 1945, Authorization for Military Training Center,
Panama Canal Department, attachment, Maj. Gen. Brett to Chief of Staff, letter, Pan-American Training
Division of Caribbean Defense Command, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Comands, Caribbean

81

General Brett launched a campaign in the spring of 1945 to make the ad hoc
training of Latin Americans an established feature of the Caribbean Defense command.
The general requested permission from the Chief of Staff of the Army to establish in the
Caribbean Defense Command a Pan-American Training Division. The Division would
provide basic and elementary training for enlisted men and junior officers of Latin
America armies, and, as an added bonus, serve as transition training and screening
facilities for Latin American students scheduled to attend schools in the United States.
General Brett took care not to challenge existing army schools in the United States when
he stressed that this plan is concerned primarily with those officers and enlisted men
who are not specifically qualified, either by education or training, to attend school in the
United States. Staff at the Pentagon quickly agreed with the two phases of the
generals plan, setting aside schools in Panama for junior level training while preparing
senior officers and specialists, both officers and enlisted men, for training at schools
in the United States.53
Not surprisingly, cost quickly became a source of concern for the office of the
Army Chief of Staff. While acknowledging the armys authority to formally institute
such training pursuant to Congressional and Executive authorization in 1938, the Office

Defense Command, 1941-1948, Box 116, FN 353 Training of Latin American Personnel, Caribbean
Defense Command, 1-3. NARA II.
53

Maj. Gen. Brett (COMGENCDC) to COSUSA, 17 Apr. 1945, Pan-American Training

Division of Caribbean Defense Command, RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Army-Intelligence Project
Decimal File, 1941-1945, Box 52, FN 352 Caribbean Defense Command, 1; Blaine to Asst, Chief of Staff,
28 Apr. 1945, Pan-American Training Division of Caribbean Defense Command, RG 319 Records of the
Army Staff, Army-Intelligence Project Decimal File, 1941-1945, Box 52, FN 352 Caribbean Defense
Command, 1-4. NARA II.

82

of the Chief of Staff for the Army wanted the military mission chiefs at the various
embassies who reported directly to the Pentagon and not to the Caribbean Defense
Command to control student selection and agreed to furnishing transportation,
housing, some clothing, (to be returned) but not mess. Brett responded that Congress in
1938 had authorized such training without cost to the governments concerned. The
current training, he admonished, has been handled on a piece-meal basis, and therefore
any further delay in establishing a thorough and comprehensive program for all phases
of such training would be unwise. General Brett reiterated that he wanted his superiors
to be aware that this plan is primarily concerned with those officers and enlisted men
who are not specifically qualified, either by education or training, to attend school in the
United States. The general continued to tout that such training was obviously superior
for exposing students not only to our military methods but to our social order. Again,
the general sought to draw attention to the beneficial potential in training Latin American
military. Given the marginal place of the Latin American training program within the
U.S. Army, General Brett wanted to encourage his superiors in Washington, D.C., to
keep open the opportunity to influence Latin American military in the post-war world.54
The commanding general of the Caribbean Defense Command received sanction
for the Latin American School in early September 1945. Support for General Bretts
position on funding came in early May when the intelligence officer to the Deputy Chief

54

Schmidt to Ringold, memorandum, 5 May 1945, Pan-American Training Division of

Caribbean Defense Command, RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Army-Intelligence Project Decimal
File, 1941-1945, Box 52, FN 352 Caribbean Defense Command, 1-2; and Freeman, Authorization for
Military Training Center, 1-3. NARA II.

83

of Staff for the Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed that the United States should provide air
transportation to Panama from all parts of the Caribbean area and Central and South
America.

He added that the Germans were most successful in bringing Latin

America's officers to Germany, before the war, arranging for their transportation.
Additionally, the G-2 officer rejected any effort to exclude Latin Americans without
English skills, arguing that under no circumstances should knowledge of English be a
requirement.

Such provision would make the plan useless before it even started.

Furthermore, he gave his unqualified support to the Caribbean Defense Command when
he insisted that every effort should be made to provide mess -- as well as housing and
transportation. . . . there is probably no more tangible and, in the long run, no cheaper
propaganda than food for a mans stomach. It is a fact that lack of funds has been a
major deterrent for most Latin Americans coming to U.S. Army schools in the past.
Finally, General Bretts supporters felt that this training represented the only answer to
our future military relations with Latin America.

Putting it into effect promptly is

essential so that Latin America will not again turn to Europe -- including Russia. The
Accounting Generals Office grudgingly approved the plan but insisted that any monies
disbursed would require detailed reports for precisely which students received precisely
what training. And, the AGO ordered, the Caribbean Defense Command could pay for
any school out of its existing budget.55

55

Pabst to Ringold, memorandum, 1 May 1945, CDC Proposal on Latin American Training in
Panama Canal Zone, RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Army-Intelligence Project Decimal File, 19411945, Box 52, FN 352 Caribbean Defense Command, 1-4; and Freeman, Authorization for Military
Training Center, 1-3. NARA II.

84

The Latin American Training Center opened its doors at Ft. Amador in early
1946.

Army attachs at various embassies in Latin America continued to receive

numerous requests for training at U.S. facilities, and funneled students as directed by the
U.S. Army. The Latin American military preferred schools located in the United States,
especially the Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas.
Occasionally, Latin American nations sought entrance for selected members of their
military into West Point, the United States military academy, which the U.S. Army only
rarely granted. With the emergence of the Air Force as a separate branch of the United
States military soon after World War II, training in Panama quickly reflected this
alteration to the defense organization of the United States when the Latin American
Training Center was divided into the Latin American Ground School and the Latin
American Air School. The Mobile Task Force Command in Panama spurred on this
division when it requested, and received, permission for the establishment of a separate
Infantry School with a special teaching staff. The fitful infantry training offered during
the war had been left to the 295th Puerto Rican Infantry Regiment. The Task Force
Command believed that only in this way could an efficient infantry training program . . .
be realized to properly train the Latin American officers who were scheduled to arrive
in Panama in early 1946 from several Central and South American republics. Staff at
the headquarters of the Caribbean Defense Command were pleased to report that little
effect on the training was evident as a consequence of this shift.56

56

Office of the Staff Secretary, Training, 1941-1946, 115. CMH; RG 319 Records of the Army
Staff, Army-Intelligence Project Decimal File, 1946-1948, Box 820, FN 350.2 (7-13-46). See various

85

Not surprisingly, the Caribbean Defense Command continued to praise its training
programs, contending in a summary of 1946 activities that the Latin American Training
school definitely established closer relations between the Armed Forces of the United
States and the armies of the nations participating in the program. The experience of the
army at the new facility mirrored the training regimen of World War II. Latin American
students at the Latin American Ground School received training very similar to that of
their U.S. counterparts. Trainers used an array of U.S. Army manuals such as those from
the U.S. Army Armored School at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, and the Infantry School at Ft.
Benning, Georgia. A selected handful of officers and enlisted men from Colombia,
Venezuela, El Salvador, and Honduras received basic engineering training, primarily in
the use of heavy equipment for road construction, and a few students from Costa Rica
received basic weapons training to take back home. By spring of 1947, staff in Panama
touted the numbers of Latin American military graduated from courses in our Latin
American schools . . . four hundred ninety-six (496) officers and six hundred fifty-six
(656) enlisted men. While the U.S. Army concurred in spirit, it worried that in the
interests of fostering good will and mutual understanding between Latin-American
countries and the United States, it would be highly undesirable to remove Latin-

cables in RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Army-Intelligence Project Decimal File, 1946-1948, Box 95,
FN 35211 Command and General Staff College. NARA II; Office of the Staff Secretary, Training, 19411946, 116; Historical Section, Training of Latin American Military Personnel, Training, vol. 2,
Department Schools 100-1, 109; and Office of the Staff Secretary, Training, 1941-1946, 116. CMH.

86

American students from United States Training Schools for language difficulty or
inability to absorb the required training.57
The language skills of Latin American military students proved to be a problem
for the U.S. Army. The army had received numerous complaints from its schools to the
effect that the limited English language skills of Latin American soldiers and officers
greatly hampered instruction. These were often thinly veiled attacks on the intelligence
of the troops in question. To curtail this problem, the army wanted its military missions
in Latin America to work harder with their host countries to ensure that only qualified
applicants were advanced and that they, the mission chiefs and their attachs, provided
proper English training for prospective students. In Panama, the Caribbean Defense
Command sought to provide Spanish language training whenever possible. Doing so,
they argued, impressed the Latin American military and greatly enhanced the benefits
accruing to the United States from this new attitude on the part of the Latin Americans
[which] might be far reaching. The Caribbean Defense Command emphasized the
potential of U.S. training to affect future hemispheric relations. They concluded that A
lasting good impression carried away by Latin American military students is not only

57

Historical Section, Training of Latin American Military Personnel, Training, vol. 2,

Department Schools, 112. CMH. For training manuals from the Armored School at Ft. Knox, see RG 319
Records of the Army Staff, Army-Intelligence Project Decimal File, 1946-1948, Box 819, FN 350.2 (7-1346); and for manuals from the Infantry School at Ft. Benning that were employed by trainers in Panama,
see RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Army-Intelligence Project Decimal File, 1941-1945, Box 818, FN
350.2 (7-13-46). Bonesteel to Director of Organization and Training, 3 Apr. 1947, Central and South
American Students Attending School in Panama, RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Army-Intelligence
Project Decimal File, 1946-1948, Box 93, FN 350.2 U.S. Army Caribbean School, 1947. NARA II; and RG
319 Records of the Army Staff, Army-Intelligence Project Decimal File, 1946-1948, Box 817, FN 350.2 1
Jan. 47 thru 31 Dec. 48. NARA II.

87

important to the United States at the present time, as many of these young officers will in
the future occupy positions of influence in their respective armies, and perhaps even in
their governments. The generals in Panama never lost sight of the willingness of Latin
American military to insert themselves into their nations politics, or the potential for
U.S. military training to serve the United States in the coming years.58
U.S. ARMY CARIBBEAN SCHOOL
The United States believed that the emerging cold war required modifications to
its policy toward Latin America. The United States served notice of the limited role to be
played by Latin America with the Ro Pact of 1947, which established a mutual defense
network among the signatories. The following year at the Bogot conference, the United
States pushed for, and secured, the creation of the Organization of American States. In
doing so, the United States sought to forge an alliance that satisfied Latin American
demands for non-intervention while it secured mutual defense cooperation.

Latin

America looked forward to an era in which the OAS would be the mechanism for the
nations of the hemisphere to relate as sovereign entities. The United States, on the other
hand, wanted to create the political framework necessary to prevent regional conflicts and
preserve hemispheric security in the face of growing tension with the Soviet Union. The
language of these two meetings stressed cooperation and mutual defense; in practical
terms, the United States made it clear that Latin America was expected to present a

58

Historical Section, Training of Latin American Military Personnel, Training, vol. 2,

Department Schools, 112. CMH.

88

unified, anti-Communist front. Latin America acceded to the Ro Pact because many of
the countries that signed believed that the United States would then make good on its prewar promises of return to the mutually beneficial economic relationships developed under
Franklin Roosevelt. Between the Ro and Bogot meetings, however, American priorities
changed. Secretary of State George Marshall abruptly told Latin Americans at Bogot
that, despite their sacrifices during the war (Latin America provided the United States
critical raw materials at below-market prices), no such trade package for the region would
be forthcoming. The hardening lines of the cold war dictated that Europe receive U.S.
foreign assistance and preferential trade agreements. While Washington would have
preferred American solidarity, all that Marshall required of Latin America was support
for hemispheric defense. Under Dwight Eisenhower, hemispheric defense solidified as
United States policy. Eisenhower wanted Latin America to be a comfortable backwater
of the cold war.

Military training appeared a good way to secure Latin American

cooperation and keep the hemisphere secure.59

The new hemispheric defense posture changed the purpose for training Latin
American military in Panama. Training in Panama in 1944 still came under the rubric of
the Caribbean Defense Command headquartered at Ft. Amador. The Joint Chiefs of Staff
changed that when they redesignated the Caribbean Defense Command the U.S. Army
Caribbean Command on Nov. 1, 1947. The term defense was dropped from the official
nomenclature because it did not capture the proactive character the army wished to

59

See Loveman, La Patria, 143-5; Child, Unequal Alliance, 99-102; Green, Containment of Latin
America, 283-6.

89

convey in the post-war period. The change represented a cold war decision that sought to
update the entire defense posture of the United States along more global lines. The
emerging hemispheric defense policy of the United States called for the new Caribbean
Command to secure the Panama Canal and the Caribbean shipping lanes, as well as to
coordinate training of Latin American military throughout the region.

In reality,

Washington would direct military training and the Caribbean Command would have the
honor of processing the paperwork. As part of the change, the U.S. Army moved its
training of Latin American military to a remote outpost on the east coast of the Canal
Zone. As they had so far, the U.S. Army continued to provide primarily technical
training, radio repair, heavy equipment operation and maintenance, and small arms
repair. In time, the USARCARIB School, as it was called, would expand its offerings
both in response to Latin American demand and to bolster the position of the school
within the U.S. Army. Most of the military students who attended school in Panama
came from the U.S. Army. But over time, an increasing percentage of the student body at
the USARCARIB School came from Latin America.60
The new USARCARIB School soon discovered that it would have to find
students in Latin America if it were to survive. On February 1, 1949, all Canal Zone
service schools were consolidated and moved to Fort Gulick. According to a 1970
Military Review article prepared by the school, Ft. Gulick initially served as an antiaircraft post situated five miles inland from the Atlantic entrance to the Canal. Army

60

Child, Unequal Alliance, 120.

90

historians, however, wrote in 1946 that Ft. Gulick originally served as the primary
medical facility for the Canal Zone and housed the 368th Station Hospital.

Both

attribute the Forts name to the outgoing Panama Department Commander, Major
General John W. Gulick. General Gulick received the Distinguished Service Cross and
the Legion of Honor from France during World War I. As a young officer, General
Gulick served as Military Attach to Chile from 1911-1916, where he also served as an
instructor to the Chilean Army. The Chilean Army awarded him the Order of the Condor
for his service.

The army relied on civilian labor to construct the facility that

originally called for a 250 bed hospital and staff of 36 nurses and a brigade of 190 men
and officers. Fort Gulick remained a rather primitive affair with only the ancillary
services needed for the hospital and the few troops stationed there during the war, with
only one 500-gallon tank of gasoline to last the post for a year. Still, the army planned to
use the hospital for those soldiers in transit from Europe to Asia after VE day who were
in need of medical care. Now, the aging outpost would serve as the primary instructional
facility for Latin American and U.S. soldiers in the Canal Zone. But the majority of
students remained American. For example, in 1949, 743 North Americans and 195
Latin Americans graduated from the school. But, that began to change in 1949 when
troop reductions in the Canal Zone coupled with an increased demand by Latin
American governments for schooling led the U.S. Army to gear its program exclusively
to non-U.S. personnel.61

61

USARSA, U.S. Army School of the Americas, Military Review vol. 40 no. 4 (Apr. 1970), 89;
Cecil L. Munden, Construction and Real Estate, vol. 2, Construction of Individual Bases, 2. CMH; ibid;

91

Not every Latin American military routinely sent students to the USARCARIB
School. All of the nations that comprise Latin America did send some students to Ft.
Gulick between 1949 and 1959. But the school served some countries much more so
than others. Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico did take part in training at the USARCARIB
School. They just did not do so very often. Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, along with
Uruguay, Chile, and Peru, all had respected military academies and colleges.

The

military from these nations welcomed U.S. military missions to their countries and U.S.
armed forces personnel as instructors at their service schools. Latin Americans prized
slots at the important U.S. service institutions, such as the Naval War College, the Army
War College, the Command and General Staff College. The United States Joint Chiefs of
Staff preferred these latter two options as the most effective schools to instill U.S.
military doctrine. In the case of Brazil, the United States assisted in the creation and
development of that countrys preeminent military institution in 1951, the Escola
Superior de Guerra. American foreign aid and American advisors helped design the
building as well as the curriculum, which was patterned after the U.S. Army War
College. The United States armed forces forged the closest relationship with Brazil of all

and U.S. Army School of the Americas, Military Review, 89; El Faro Americano vol. 2 no. 1 (Jan. 1962),
RG 498 U.S. Army Caribbean School [School of the Americas], Box 1, FN 205-02 Publications Records
Sets, 1963, 10. NARA II; Historical Section, Panama Canal Department, vol. 2, Preparation for War, 193941, 69; Cecil L. Munden, Construction and Real Estate, vol. 2, Construction of Individual Bases, 2; Leigh
C, Stevenson, Historical Section, Panama Canal Department, Preliminary Historical Study, Panama Canal
Department -- Supply, HMF 8-2.9 AK, 124; Historical Section, Panama Canal Department, vol. 3, War
Period, 1941-45, 284-92. CMH; and U.S. Army School of the Americas, Military Review, 89.

92

the Latin American military through this institution.62 But ever sensitive observers of
status themselves, the Latin American military knew that the USARCARIB School
functioned on a fairly low level within the U.S. training regime. Most of the schools
Latin American military students came from the northern Andean countries, Ecuador,
Colombia, and Venezuela, the Caribbean, and from Central America, Costa Rica,
Panama, and Nicaragua. And the elites located at the northern- or southern- most tips of
Latin America generally perceived the people from these regions as vastly inferior,
racially, culturally, and, of course, militarily.

They simply did not share the same

pedigree. For these reasons, many from the more established militaries were reluctant to
participate in training that they believed demeaned them.
The USARCARIB School enhanced its offerings in 1952 to encourage more
diverse Latin American attendance. The school continued to promote its training as a
means to facilitate greater cooperation with Latin American military.

The school,

though, in its 1952 catalog of courses, cited as one of its principal missions . . . to offer a
wide variety of military courses designed to train well-qualified military instructors,
small-unit leaders and specialists capable of instructing and performing duty in their
individual fields. The army included in the course offerings training in clerical, unit
supply, track vehicle mechanic, motor officers and sgts., radio operators,
cooking, mess management, mess administration, officers leadership, and
noncommissioned officers leadership.

The USARCARIB School conducted these

62

Sonny B. Davis, Brotherhood of Arms: Brazil-United States Military Relations, 1945-1977

(Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1996), 93-115.

93

courses in English using U.S. Army regulation field manuals and advertised them as
such. The schools commandant, Colonel Myron P. Smith, reported to the army in June
1952 that courses on wheel vehicle mechanic, engineer, infantry, weapons,
communications officer and chief, radio maintenance, tactics, and military police
were taught in Spanish, with the latter of these also taught in English. Part of the training
the U.S. soldiers in Panama received that their Latin American counterparts did not
concerned atomic war and fallout. As part of its radiological defense training, the army
assured instructors that there is little likelihood of danger due to the contamination of the
ground about the zero point with radioactive residues after the air burst. . . . Unless there
were some unusual meteorological conditions, such as a heavy rainstorm, it is not
believed that the residual radiation, following an air burst, would ever be dangerous.63
On a lighter, but still illustrative note, courses for cooks, mess supervision and
administration remained one of the more consistent programs offered at the
USARCARIB School during the 1950s. In October 1952 the schools Commandant, Col.
James M. Pumpelly, politely informed his commanding officer that the lack of a suitable
dining facility for student officers of the USARCARIB School posed something of a
problem. Latin American officers, he wrote, are not accustomed to dining in the same

63

Introduction, The USARCARIB School Catalog, 1952 (Ft. Gulick, C.Z.: USARCARIB
School, 1952), RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 12
Admin 1951-52, FN 352 USARCARIB, iii, v; Myron D. Smith (Commandant), letter, 24 June 1952,
Classroom Hours per Day, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 19471964, Box 12 Admin 1951-52, FN 352; and Panama Area Damage Control School, Radiological Defense
Training, Phase III, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box
12 Admin 1951-52, FN 352 (PADCS). NARA II.

94

area as enlisted personnel. Indeed, the USARCARIB School Commandant told the
commanding general of the U.S. Army Caribbean that the serving of Officers in The
USARCARIB School troop mess has always been a source of complaints and grievances
by Latin American officer personnel. Establishing an officers mess should alleviate
this problem, especially, he continues, due to the continued large student enrollment.
But this should not pose an undue burden, he concludes, because the Food Service
Division of The USARCARIB School is prepared to provide sufficient qualified student
personnel for its operation who benefited from such courses as pastry chef.64
The school continued to tout its ability to foster better hemispheric relations via
the training of Latin American military.

The school continued to keep abreast of

activities of the regions U.S. military missions and Military Assistance and Advisory
Groups, or MAAGs. Those missions often required the U.S. military to adjust to life in
their host nations. In January 1952, the Chief of the U.S. military mission in Cuba
requested funds to permit one officer and one enlisted man to attend Cuban military
clubs. His reasoning that normal duty will require considerable social contact with
Cubans both militarily and civilian (since the Cuban military is more closely associated
than are the American services), warranted government funds for the soldiers in
question. And those missions continued to serve as the critical conduit for students. To
further cement good relations, the school arranged an Americas pistol competition in

64

Pumpelly (Commandant USARCARIB School) to COMGENUSARCARIB, letter, 10 Oct.

1952, Establishment of an Officers Field Mess at Fort Gulick, C.Z., RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army
Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 9 Admin 1951-52, FN 331.2 Officers Club, 1952, 1-2.
NARA II.

95

October 1952, arguing, with no hint of self-consciousness, that a shooting competition

with various nearby Latin American countries would be desirable as a means of
cementing friendly relations and promoting better understanding between members of our
Army and members of the neighboring armies. And in November of that year, the U.S.
Army Caribbean arranged a visit to the Colombian War College. In these ways, the
school sought to fulfill its paramount mission, which was to contribute to the
development of mutual comprehension and good will between the Armies of the
American republics.65
The new Commandant at the USARCARIB School in 1953 lamented the limited
influence of the school on future politics in the region.

The United States needed

cooperative allies in Latin America. For years now, the U.S. Army officers in charge of
training Latin American military had emphasized the ability of military training to foster
closer relations with some of the regions future military leaders.

The Eisenhower

administration encouraged this view, and leaders at the USARCARIB School did their
best to promote training at Ft. Gulick as a means to help secure that cooperation. Colonel

65

See for example RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 19471964, Box 8, Admin 1951-52, FN 319.1 Mission Reports, 1951-1952; and RG 338 Records of the U.S.
Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 10 Admin 1951-52, FN 331.1 Missions, 2
Binders. Hoover to COMGENUSARCARIB, letter, 10 Jan. 1952, Membership in Cuban Clubs, RG 338
Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 9 Admin 1951-52, FN
331.2, Officers Club, 1952; RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 19471964, Box 12 Admin 1951-52, FN 352 USARCARIB (Latin American Students); Daniel Still
(Commander) to COMGENUSARCARIB, letter, 16 Oct. 1952, Rifle and Pistol Competition with Latin
American Countries, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964,
Box 12 Admin 1951-52, FN 3533 (Chronological); RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S.
Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 12 Admin 1951-52, FN 352 USARCARIB (Latin American Students);
and USARCARIB School, Introduction, The USARCARIB School Catalog, 1952 (Ft. Gulick, C.Z.:
USARCARIB School, 1952), RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 19471964, Box 12 Admin 1951-52, FN 352 USARCARIB, iii. NARA II.

96

Taylor, however, informed his commander on the Pacific side of the Canal Zone that the
school had in its four and one-half (4 1/2) years of operation . . . trained seven hundred
and thirty-four (734) officers and one thousand one hundred and thirty-eight (1138)
enlisted men of seventeen (17) Latin American Republics. Most of these military
students came from Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Nicaragua.

Unfortunately,

Commandant Taylor added, the majority of such students have been below the grade of
Captain, with the greater portion of the officer students being in the grade of lieutenant or
cadet. The colonels concern stemmed from his conviction that while undoubtedly a
favorable impression has been made on such personnel, in the course of their training by
U.S. military at the facility in Panama the influence of such officer in the military and,
indirectly, political policies of their countries, is limited as they are not, in most cases, in
a position to make their opinions or views felt. He warned that by the time such
officers have reached positions of great responsibility in their countries, fifteen (15) or
twenty (20) years from now, many will have had their viewpoints altered by the now
senior officers of their armies or will have passed from the military picture of their
nations. Colonel Taylor, therefore, requested permission to establish courses for senior
grade officers. This would put the USARCARIB School in direct competition with
programs such as those at the Command and General Staff College, something that the
army did not want to occur. But, Colonel Taylor argued, an attempt should be made to
reach the more influential levels of the Latin American Armies.

Of course, by

influential the colonel referred to those officers able to insert themselves into the
political process. Thus, Colonel Taylor concluded, it is believed that the proposed
97

course would serve to . . . create closer liaison with the neighbor armies, and to promote
hemispherical solidarity by giving all armies a common understanding of staff
procedures. Most of all, such a course would increase the influence of the United
States in Latin America.66
Colonel Taylors admonition seemed pertinent given the consistent high demand
by the Latin American military for training. The attach in Chile forwarded the request
of a Chilean Air Force major concerning the possibility of his spending about a year as
an observer with the Anti-Aircraft Artillery, U.S. Army. Tension, however, between the
military missions and the USARCARIB School continued. This was demonstrated in
August, 1953 when a U.S. officer in Colombia forwarded that armys request for
antiaircraft training to the Office of the Commanding General of the U.S. Army
Caribbean. And it was not uncommon for military missions to request training materials
prepared by the USARCARIB School, as they did in late 1953 when Captain Shattuck
asked that this mission be furnished lesson plans for all subjects listed in Program of
Instruction for Wheel Vehicle Mechanic Course (Spanish), The USARCARIB School,
Fort Gulick, CZ dated 1 June 52. The correspondence, which noted that Colombian
Government prepared to utilize 40 spaces in Antiaircraft Artillery course commencing in
September, was forwarded to Ft. Gulick. Honduras requested company level training in
the spring of 1953, but the military attach in Tegucigalpa felt that the expected use by

66

Colonel Taylor (Commandant) to CGUSARCARIB, letter, 14 Aug. 1953, Latin American

Regimental Command and Staff Course at the USARCARIB School, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army
Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 31, FN 352 U.S.AR-LAS, 1. NARA II.

98

the Honduran Army of this training posed a tactical problem and he requested that it
be reviewed and your comments and/or recommendations submitted to this
headquarters. And Guatemala requested training for a pair of officers each to attend
Infantry Weapons Course reporting 21 Aug. and . . . for Tactics course reporting 30 Oct.
Occasionally, the USARCARIB School had to make adjustments to handle the demand.
In the fall of 1954, the school added a military police course for Ecuadorian students,
since the capabilities of the Military Police division of the USARCARIB School will not
permit the enrollment of eighty (80) Ecuadorian students in a single class.

The

USARCARIB School Commandant, Colonel Meeks, assured the Chief of the Military
Mission to Ecuador that the curriculum for the special class will be identical to the
standard Military Police Course offered at the USARCARIB School. Occasionally,
members of the United States Congress visited the military missions to Latin America,
and added their weight to Latin American requests for training.67

67

See RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 31,
FN 352 U.S.AR-LAS; RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964,
Box 51, FN 350.2 Binder #1; and RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean,
1947-1964, Box 52, FN 352 (USARCARIB), Binder #1. Ross to Army Attach, Chile, cable, 23 Oct.
1953, Anti-Aircraft Training, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean,
1947-1964, Box 31, FN 350.2; Shattuck to CGUSARCARIB, letter, 27 Oct. 1953, Request for Lesson
Plan Material (Wheel Vehicle Maintenance), RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army,
Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 31, FN 352 (USARCARIB), Binder # 1; Turner to CGUSARCARIB, cable, 11
Aug. 1953, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 31, FN
352 (USARCARIB), Binder # 1; Dalton to Commandant (Col. Taylor), letter, 10 Apr. 1953, Company
Attacks to be Utilized by Honduran Army, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army,
Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 32, FN 353 (General), Binder # 1; CGUSARCARIB to Chief U.S.ARMIS
Guatemala, cable, 6 Aug. 1953, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean,
1947-1964, Box 31, FN 352 (USARCARIB), Binder # 1; Meeks to Chief, Military Mission to Ecuador,
cable, 11 Sept. 1954, Special Military Police Course, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands,
U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 52, FN 352 (USARCARIB), Binder #1; and RG 338 Records of
the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 51, FN 337, Visits, Binder #2. NARA
II.

99

Latin America had consistently sought more specialized training from the United
States to enhance internal security.

Eisenhower knew that Latin American military

routinely overthrew the democratic process in their countries. The president, however,
wanted regional security above all else. He also accepted that the military could provide
that security best. So when the number of requests from the Far East, the Near East,
Europe and Latin America for counterintelligence training increased significantly during
the mid-1950s, the Eisenhower administration responded. In May 1956, the commanding
general of the U.S. Army Caribbean, Lt. Gen. W. K. Harrison, pushed for the
establishment of a counterintelligence program at the USARCARIB School. Senior staff
for the assistant secretary of defense for internal security affairs concurred, and argued
that In Latin American nations, government stability is determined largely by the
loyalty, efficiency, and orientation of the armed forces. This condition points to the
urgent need for proper training of selected personnel from the Tri-Services of each
country, in the principles of intelligence and counterintelligence, to insure maximum
possible protection from the infiltration of Communists and other subversive elements.
General Harrisons adjutant cited requests from Colombia, Paraguay, Venezuela, and
Ecuador as evidence that the regions defense required counterintelligence training. The
Eisenhower administration, however, felt that an Intelligence course established in the
USARCARIB School would soon become common knowledge throughout South
America, and, therefore, it would become a difficult problem to accept students from one
country and not accept students from other countries. Moreover, the United States
became concerned that the establishment of intelligence training in the USARCARIB
100

School would tend to defer the establishment of an intelligence training program within
the country concerned. Eisenhower did not object to intelligence training per se. He
just did not want rivalries distracting Latin America from their primary mission,
hemispheric defense. Latin Americans bitterly resented this favoritism. So, in October
1956, the chief of the U.S. military mission in Brazil received materials for a
counterintelligence course with specific directions to ensure the custody of same. The
army preferred to control the dissemination of such specialty training.68
In turn, the military missions and advisors stationed in Latin American nations
tried to ignore the school. Instead, the U.S. Army took care to emphasize that the training
received by Latin American military personnel proved the effectiveness of the Mutual
Defense Assistance Program. While the new Commandant at the USARCARIB School,
Colonel George E. Leone, stressed the benefits of the program in August, 1954 when he

68

See RG 407 Records of the Adjutant Generals Office, 1917-, Classified Central General
Administrative Files, 1955-1962, Box 84, FN 353 (1/1/56), [2 of 2], 1-2; Lt. Gen. W. K. Harrison
(CGUSARCARIB) to ASD/ISA, letter, 18 May 1956, Counterintelligence Training for Latin American
Nationals (U), Inclosure, RG 407 Records of the Adjutant Generals Office, 1917-, Classified Central
General Administrative Files, 1955-1962, 1955-1956 Cases, Box 84, FN 353 (1/1/56), [2 of 2], 1; Lt. Gen.
W. K. Harrison (CGUSARCARIB) to ASD/ISA, letter, 18 May 1956, Counterintelligence Training for
Latin American Nationals (U), Inclosure, Col. T. B. Hanford (Reg. Dir. West. Hemi./ASD) to ACOS/G-2
Army, memorandum, 20 Aug. 1956, Counterintelligence Training for Latin American Nationals, RG 407
Records of the Adjutant Generals Office, 1917-, Classified Central General Administrative Files, 19551962, 1955-1956 Cases, Box 84, FN 353 (1/1/56), [2 of 2], 1; Lewis C. Coleman (Adjutant General) to
CGUSARCARIB, letter, 10 July 1956, Counterintelligence Training Material for Foreign Countries (U),
RG 407 Records of the Adjutant Generals Office, 1917-, Classified Central General Administrative Files,
1955-1962, 1955-1956 Cases, Box 84, FN 353 (1/1/56), [2 of 2], 1; George H. Roderick (ASA) to
ASD/ISA, memorandum, 18 Dec. 1956, Intelligence Training for Latin American Nationals (U), RG 407
Records of the Adjutant Generals Office, 1917-, Classified Central General Administrative Files, 19551962, 1955-1956 Cases, Box 84, FN 353 (1/1/56), [2 of 2], 1; Harry O. Paxon (Dep. ACS, Intelligence
CONUS) to Chief, USAR/Joint Brazil-U.S. Military Commission (CGUSARCARIB), letter, 17 Oct. 1956,
Training Materials for Foreign Countries (U), RG 407 Records of the Adjutant Generals Office, 1917-,
Classified Central General Administrative Files, 1955-1962, 1955-1956 Cases, Box 84, FN 353 (1/1/56) [1
of 2], 1-2; and Roderick (ASA) to ASD/ISA, Intelligence Training, 1. NARA II.

101

noted that, because of IRDA and/or MDAP funds . . . these sponsorship students receive
without cost to host government their personal maintenance cost and course cost, the
MAAGs did not consider the school to be a critical part of their mission. Through
procedure and intra-service rivalry, the mission chiefs and the MAAGs as a whole tended
to leave the school out of the loop, so to speak, on a regular basis. For example, in 1955,
the South and Central American mission chiefs held a conference at Ft. Amador, on the
Pacific Coast of the Zone, to discuss their efforts and problems encountered while on
tour. But no one from the school, not its commandant nor any of its instructors, were
invited.
America.

Instead, the MAAGs focused on their many and varied missions to Latin
The Inter-American Geodetic Survey (IAGS) proved to be one of those

programs in which the army set great store, citing its unique ability to unite the peoples of
the hemisphere. This topographical mapping project was designed to pave the way, so to
speak, for road building to greatly enhance the movement of troops and armored vehicles.
Beginning in Venezuela, and working their way down the coast of South America, U.S.
Army teams assigned to the IAGS were trumpeted as bringing the benefits of modern life
to the poor and backwards denizens of the continents farthest reaches. Military attachs
to Latin America were essential to this project. Mission officers managed, however, to
keep tabs on the students they referred to the USARCARIB School and continued to pass
on requests made by their host nations for training.69

69

George E. Leone (Commandant) to Surgeon General, memorandum, 31 Aug. 1954, RG 338

Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 52, FN 352 (USARCARIB
-- LAS), Binder #2. See Mack to (Mission Chiefs), cable 28 Nov. 1955, Mission Chiefs Conference -- 1113 Jan. 1956, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 71,

102

The USARCARIB School tried to meet Latin American demand for infantry
training. The Eisenhower administration, by the mid-1950s, accepted the prospect that
military training could foster improved relations and in turn greater cooperation on
hemispheric defense activities. The president, however, did not want Latin America
distracted from its prescribed duties. Given his disdain for the peoples of the third world,
Eisenhower did not believe the Latin American military could do much else. So any
changes in the USARCARIB Schools protocol had to satisfy the demands of
hemispheric defense. The schools commandant believed that infantry training did just
that. In mid-December 1953, Colonel Taylor sought to impress upon the Caribbean
Command that Latin American training requirements in the past as well as for FY 1955
reflect a preference for U.S Army career type courses of which only a limited number of
quota spaces are available for foreign nationals. To that end, Colonel Taylor requested
in mid-1953 that the designation of the existing The Officers Leadership Course . . . be
changed to the title designation USARCARIB Junior Officers Course. Latin American
students bridled under the assertion that they did not, as yet, possess leadership skills. In

FN 337 General, Binder #2. For details of the Conference held 13-16 June 1955, see USARCARIB
Mission/MAAG Conference, 13-16 June 1955, Fort Amador, Canal Zone, RG 338 Records of the U.S.
Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 71, FN 337. See RG 338 Records of the U.S.
Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 69, FN 330.32 Mission, Binder #1-#2; RG 338
Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 71, FN 337 Visits, Binder
#1-#4; RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 71, FN
350.2, Binder #1-#2; RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964,
Box 84, FN 333.1 (IG), Binder #1-#6; Jones to CGUSARCARIB, memorandum, 16 Mar. 1953, Annual
General Inspection, FY 1953, Inter-American Geodetic Survey Project, Venezuela, RG 338 Records of the
U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 29, FN 333.1 Inspector General, Binder
#1; RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 85, FN 350.2;
and RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 85, FN 337
Visits, Binder #1-#3. NARA II.

103

addition, the USARCARIB School sought to distinguish courses for junior and senior
grade officers. The USARCARIB Command decided to make the change to Company
Grade Officers Course to be effective in the 1954 School Catalog. In mid-1954,
Venezuela requested Command and General Staff Course from the military mission to
Caracas. The mission wrote to the commanding general of the Caribbean Command that
this training represented an excellent opportunity to promote U.S. doctrines in the
Armed Forces of Venezuela. The host government is exhibiting keen interest in our
doctrines and it is believed that this interest should be fostered by this type of operation.
The mission needed instructional materials from the USARCARIB School. Later that
year, the school hosted a detachment of field grade officers for a special course at Ft.
Gulick. In late 1955, the school conducted a broad program of instruction for an entire
infantry battalion of the Nicaraguan National Guard. Basic infantry training, it seems, fit
within the hemispheric defense posture since the United States hoped that Latin America
could supply troops in any war with the Soviet Union.70

70

Eddleman to CGUSARCARIB, memorandum, 16 Dec. 1953, School Quotas for Latin

American Students Attending United States Service Schools, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army
Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 31, FN 350.2; Col. Taylor (Commandant) to
CGUSARCARIB, 14 Oct. 1953, Redesignation of the Officers Leadership and Noncommissioned
Officers Leadership Courses, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean,
1947-1964, Box 31, FN 352 (USARCARIB), Binder #1; Col. Taylor (Commandant) to CGUSARCARIB,
14 Aug. 1953, Latin American Regimental Command and Staff Course at the USARCARIB School, RG
338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 31, FN 352 U.S.ARLAS, 1-3; Koenig to Commandant (Taylor), 4 Nov. 1953, Redesignation of the Officers Leadership and
Noncommissioned Officers Leadership Courses, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S.
Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 31, FN 352 (USARCARIB), Binder #1; Ahee to Commandant CGSC,
memorandum, 29 Mar. 1954, Request for Instructional Material, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army
Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 52, FN 352 (CGSC),1-2; Rachko to Chief, U.S.
Mission, Venezuela, cable, 1 Oct. 1954, Venezuelan Officers to Attend Latin American Field Grade
Officers Course USARCARIB School, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army,
Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 52, FN 352 (USARCARIB -- LAS), Binder #2; and Pumpelly, memorandum,

104

To further facilitate the instruction of Latin American military personnel, the

USARCARIB School in 1956 began to conduct all courses in Spanish. This represented
the culmination of several years worth of effort and also demonstrated the extent to
which the instruction of Latin American military personnel, and not U.S. Army
personnel, had become the primary mission of the school. The USARCARIB School had
struggled to fulfill its requirement as a conduit for armed forces instructional facilities in
the United States, who insisted that a good working knowledge of written and spoken
English is essential for all students selected to attend United States Army Service
Schools. The Command and General Staff College required all prospective students
who do not receive waivers to pass an English language test. The USARCARIB
School also sought U.S. Army personnel with sufficient Spanish language skills to serve
as instructors, as they did in late 1956 when they invited a team of bilingual officers
from the Air Command and Staff College . . . to teach tactical Air Support to the Field
Grade Officers Course at the USARCARIB School 26 thru 29 November 1956. As
part of their effort to encourage non-English speaking soldiers to come to Ft. Gulick, the
school requested permission to have foreign officers serve as instructors. And many
Latin American officers sought to extend their tours at Ft. Gulick. In May 1955, the
Commandant wrote to the Mission Chief in Bogot to facilitate the processing for one
such student. Col. John J. Davis requested that the proper agency of the Colombian
Ministry of Defense be contacted as to the feasibility of assigning Captain Jorge Robledo

10 Nov. 1955, MAAG memorandum of Record, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S.
Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 85, FN 333.1 (IG), Binder #4. NARA II.

105

P. to the USARCARIB School as an instructor in the Infantry Weapons and Tactics

Course for a one (1) year period. Colonel Davis did so because he believed that the
assignment of Captain Robledo will greatly enhance the quality of instruction in the
Infantry Weapons and Tactics Course and further will provide the school with the Latin
American concept of higher level Infantry and Weapons and Tactics function. By the
end of the year, the school had its own translation staff. This department has translated
U.S. Army training manuals into Spanish for the last four decades.71
The USARCARIB School continued to struggle to secure quality Latin American
military personnel. To ensure that the school received only those students who can
absorb the instruction and at the same time benefit from the course being given, the
1959 course catalog admonished that students selected for attendance at the
USARCARIB School should be carefully screened by Military Mission Chiefs, Army
MAAG Representatives, and Military Attachs . . . to determine his fitness, bearing in
mind the scope of the course and the educational prerequisites. The catalog noted that,
in some instances in the past, students from different countries have arrived to take the

71

USARSA, U.S. Army School of the Americas, Military Review, 89; Shugart to Chiefs,
Missions, and USARCARIB, memorandum, 22 Oct. 1953, Attendance of LA Students to Service Schools
in the United States, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964,
Box 31, FN 352, U.S.AR-LAS, 1; Gavin to MAAGs, Missions, and Attachs (Latin America),
memorandum, 4 Nov. 1954, English Language Tests for Latin American Nominees to CGSC, RG 338
Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 51, FN 350.2, Binder #2;
Rowan to Commander Maxwell AFB, memorandum, 10 Oct. 1956, Request for Guest Speakers, RG 338
Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 85, FN 350.001; Sullivan to
Chief, Mission Ecuador, memorandum, 27 Dec. 1956, Instructor Personnel, Records of the U.S. Army
Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 85, FN 35216; RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army
Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 71, FN 35216; and John J. Davis (Commandant) to
Chief of Mission, Colombia, 9 May 1955, Instructor Personnel, RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army
Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 71, FN 35216. NARA II.

106

same course but have ranged from officers who were graduate engineers to enlisted men
who had difficulty reading and writing. Since the paramount mission of the school
remained to contribute to the development of mutual comprehension and goodwill
among the military establishments of the American Republics, the school argued that
this can best be accomplished if selected personnel are trained.72
By the end of the 1950s, the USARCARIB School had established itself as the
U.S. Armys primary center for instruction of Latin American officers. Gone were the
courses in heavy equipment operation.

Now, the school operated primarily as an

infantry-training center, with a range of courses in tactics, from cadet to command and
general staff level. While the school did provide instruction for non-commissioned
officers, the emphasis clearly shifted to officer training, as demonstrated by such classes
as Advanced and Basic Field Artillery Officers, Communications Officers, and
Engineer Officers.

Among the more consistently popular courses were those on

military police with classes for both officers and enlisted personnel.

And the

USARCARIB School continued some instruction in cooking, so that the students

would be fed, but listed the course under the Quartermaster Section Staff.73

72

USARCARIB School, The USARCARIB School Catalog, 1958-1959 (USARCARIB School:

Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1958), vi and 8. John Amos Library, Ridgeway Hall, Ft. Benning, Georgia. [Hereafter
cited as John B. Amos Library].
73

Ibid., 11-66, 67-80, 81-88, 89-93, 121-8, 137-42, and 148.

107

TRAINING AND COOPERATION

In the years after World War II, the U.S. Army cemented its belief that it could
effect substantive positive relations with the nations of Latin America through the
training of selected members of the regions armed forces. Still, hemispheric defense
remained the policy of the United States, and the nations and militaries of Latin America
were expected to play a decidedly subordinate position. Despite the best efforts of the
army commanders headquartered in Panama, the U.S. Army continued its ad hoc
tradition of training Latin American military personnel. The level of importance attached
to that training grew somewhat with the heightened tensions of the cold war. But with
the Canal secure, policymakers simply had more important regions of the world with
which to concern themselves. That relative indifference demonstrated itself in the fitful
and inconsistent military training of Latin American armed forces that left the U.S. Army
Caribbean School mired in bureaucratic squabbles and competing with the more
independent and recognized military missions. While the school did manage to shift its
orientation to infantry and officer training, dropping heavy equipment courses in 1955,
the overarching rubric of hemispheric defense still defined the relatively minor place of
Latin American military training in U.S. military policy. That is, until a former pitching
prospect did the seemingly unthinkable, and led the overthrow of one of the more
persistent authoritarian regimes in Latin America on New Years Day, 1959.

108

Chapter 2:
Eisenhower and the P-factor: Psychological Warfare, Paternalism,
and U.S. Counterinsurgency Training in Latin America, 1959-1961
President Dwight David Eisenhowers decision at the end of his tenure in the
White House to institute counterinsurgency training for Latin Americas military
represented a qualitative shift in his Latin American policy. Eisenhower felt keenly that
the United States had a responsibility to provide leadership during the cold war. Despite
the often inflated rhetoric and strident hyperbole of Eisenhowers long-time secretary of
state, John Foster Dulles, the president himself focused on what he considered the true
threat to the American way of life: nuclear war. True, the president recognized the
strategic importance of the Panama Canal and the shipping lanes of the Caribbean, not to
mention the regions proximity to the southern United States. But Latin America simply
did not merit the attention, let alone cost and effort, of his administration. Consequently,
Eisenhower assured himself of loyal and staunchly anti-Communist allies and kept his
eyes on the true hot spots of the cold war Eastern Europe and Asia. Even Vice
President Richard Nixons ill-fated trip to South America in mid-1958, which presaged
the great potential for unrest in this previously secure cold war backwater, did not sway
Americas unswerving support for virulently anti-Communistic dictatorships. The Cuban
Revolution in 1959 proved to be a watershed in U.S.-Latin American relations. In short
order, the president and his staff would acknowledge that hemispheric defense against
massive external attack no longer served as a legitimate defensive posture. They feared
109

Cubas potential, as a symbol and through the efforts of its new revolutionary
government, to foment insurrection in the region. Internal security in Latin America,
therefore, needed to be maintained with U.S. direction.74
President Eisenhowers fiscal conservatism prevented his wholesale adoption of
substantial American financial aid as a palliative to Communist aggression in
underdeveloped areas. The National Security Council in February 1959 advised the
president that influential segments of Latin opinion equate the attainment of an economy
less dependent on the U.S. market and on operations of large U.S. corporations with the
achievement of full sovereignty. For his brother, Milton Eisenhower, the answer lay in
American financial aid to promote precisely this type of economic independence. The
president did share his aides growing conviction that economic development represented
a viable method of staving off Communist advancement in Latin America and elsewhere
in the underdeveloped world. Eisenhower came to realize in his own April 1960 visit to
South America that economic development had not progressed there and that the regions
unrelenting poverty deserved to be alleviated, if only to prevent political instability and
Communist subversion, which had become a very real threat with the Cuban Revolution.

74

The contemporary use of the term counterinsurgency grew out of small-unit warfare
military tactics and had imbued with it, by the Kennedy Administration, doctrinal notions of protecting
economic development from Communist incursion or subversion. In the parlance of the times,
counterinsurgency, counter guerilla, irregular warfare, and small-unit warfare were used
interchangeably and by the end of the 1950s had become consonant with internal security. See David F.
Schmitz, Thank God Theyre on Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 178-233; Stephen Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin
America: The Foreign Policy of Anti-Communism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988),
26-41; and Mark T. Gilderhaus, The Second Century: U.S.-Latin American Relations since 1889
(Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2000), 113-162.

110

One historian has argued that Eisenhowers shifting Latin American policy late in his
tenure prefigured Kennedys Alliance for Progress, and had Eisenhower continued to
serve as president, his later policy would have greatly mirrored that of his much younger
successor. Instead, the Latin American policy of Herbert Hoover offers the more relevant
parallel.

Hoover had decided that decades of vaguely defined, indefinite military

intervention in the Caribbean and Central America should come to a close. But Hoover
did not envision the Good Neighbor Policy of Franklin Roosevelt; nor did he, like
Eisenhower who came later, wish to expend American tax dollars unnecessarily on
peoples who should be prepared to do for themselves. While Eisenhowers notion of
acceptable federal government involvement dwarfed that of his Republican predecessor,
he, too, emphasized individual attainment and limited federal government interference.
Eisenhower did increase aid to Latin America by 850 million dollars in the final two
years of his administration. And he did, ultimately, give approval to the Inter-American
Development Bank.

But that assistance was contingent upon his requirements that

American generosity not become a dole for the regions nations. The presidents brand
of liberalism circumscribed the cost of a dramatically expanded role for U.S. aid to the
region.75

75

National Security Council, memorandum, NSC 5902/1, 16 Feb. 1959, U.S. Policy Toward
Latin America, White House Office, Spec. Asst. National Security Agency, 1952-61, NSC, Policy Papers,
Box 26, FN NSC 5902-Latin America (1), 58. Dwight David Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene,
Kansas. [Hereafter cited as Eisenhower Presidential Library]. See Robert Griffith, Dwight D. Eisenhower
and the Corporate Commonwealth, American Historical Review vol 87. no. 1 (Feb. 1992), 87-122; Rabe,
Eisenhower in Latin America, 140-52. See Alexander De Conde, Hoover's Latin-American Policy
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961). Burton I. Kaufman, Trade and Aid: Eisenhowers Foreign
Economic Policy, 1953-1961 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982); Diane B. Kunz,

111

Instead, Eisenhowers decision to launch U.S. military-directed counterinsurgency

training reflected his consistent effort to win the ideological battle with the Soviet Union.
In trying to preserve the American way of life, Eisenhower consciously framed the
struggle with the Soviet Union as psychological warfare. The term psychological
warfare possesses remarkable plasticity and specifically denotes a branch of
counterinsurgency tactics, such aspropaganda, civic action, and state police action.
Recent scholarship on the Eisenhower Administration suggests that the president saw
psychological warfare considerations as inseparable from other elements of national
security. Moreover, this ideological competition . . . for the allegiance of the worlds
peoples suffused all U.S. actions and policies. Eisenhowers paternalistic view of nonEuropeans, however, impeded his ability to gain a psychological edge in this struggle.
He saw Mexicans as rascals at heart. You cant trust them. Indians were funny
people and he was convinced that Arabs simply cannot understand our ideas of
human freedom and dignity. And Eisenhower was not alone in his disdain for Latin
Americans. His blustering secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, remarked in 1953 about
Latin Americans that you have to pat them on the head and make them think that you
are fond of them. Thomas Mann, the assistant secretary of state for economic affairs
under Eisenhower and a long-time Latin American specialist, baldly declared: I know
my Latinos. They understand only two things a buck in the pocket and a kick in the
ass. Few Americans of the day viewed the peoples of the Third World with any sense

Butter and Guns: Americas Cold War Economic Diplomacy (New York: The Free Press, 1997), 61-7; and
Rabe, Eisenhower in Latin America, 140-52.

112

of racial, political, or cultural equality. But for Eisenhower, according to one historian,
distrust of the abilities of other people came instinctively. He doubted that non-whites
could govern themselves and as such could easily fall prey to the blandishments of the
Communists. Paternalism so suffused Eisenhowers foreign policy that he relegated to
the non-white peoples of the world the duty to act as a model for the necessary
cooperation among free people.76
INTERNAL SECURITY DEBATE
Eisenhower gave to Latin America a limited and specific duty during the cold war
that he believed suited their abilities and purpose. The president embraced hemispheric
defense as the most cost-effective way to develop a policy that included the entire
Western Hemisphere. And as President Eisenhower sought to prepare his own country
for war, his efforts included Latin America as well. In the United States, Eisenhower
reorganized the administration of the presidency, importing the military staff system to
coordinate policy and action.

He instituted the Operations Control Board as a

clearinghouse for evaluating and implementing policy. Eisenhower cajoled Congress to

fund the Interstate Act in 1956 to revolutionize the nations physical infrastructure. The
massive road program even required that bridges on the new freeways had to be
constructed to a minimum height to allow for military vehicles to pass underneath.
Eisenhower needed to prepare Latin America for war, too, and hemispheric defense did

76

Kenneth A. Osgood, Form before Substance: Eisenhowers Commitment to Psychological

Warfare and Negotiations with the Enemy, Diplomatic History vol. 24 no. 3 (Sum. 2000), 405-33. See,
especially n. 3, p 406; and in Schmitz, Thank God Theyre on Our Side, 182.

113

just that. The threat of war made securing the Panama Canal and the shipping lanes of
the Caribbean paramount. So, the United States assigned that responsibility to the U.S.
Army Caribbean Command, and not to any of the other nations in the region. The United
States also wanted to build radar and other surveillance installations and, in the case of
Brazil, sites for short-range nuclear missile batteries. In the meantime, the United States
had two requirements for Latin America:

coast watching and no Communist

governments. Military training served hemispheric defense doctrine well because it

provided the Latin American military with U.S. expertise and established the framework
for coordination in the event of war. And when war came, the United States expected
Latin America to follow orders. Eisenhower carefully limited the training the United
States provided to Latin America because he would not spend money for programs that
the region did not warrant.77
The United States recognized the political value of military assistance.

The

training of Latin American military during the 1950s and 1960s fell under the aegis of
what was generically referred to as the Military Assistance Program (MAP). The United
States adopted a new role as supplier and trainer to the free nations of the world with the
passage of the Mutual Defense Assistance Act in October 1949. While in general the
new program reflected Americas growing commitment to containment, specifically the
Mutual Defense Act allowed the United States to fund training for nations in the newlyformed North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

77

While Latin America rated a several

Kunz, Butter and Guns, 63; and Sonny B. Davis, A Brotherhood of Arms: Brazil-United States
Military Relations, 1845-1977 (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1996), 148-58.

114

paragraph mention in President Harry Trumans message about the program to Congress
several weeks before passage of the act, the region received less than one-half of one
percent of the actual funding. In 1951, Congress passed the Mutual Security Act, which
allowed the United States military to arrange bilateral agreements with Latin American
nations for arms sales and U.S. military training. The funding was nominal only sixtytwo million the first year for the entire region and Congress restricted American efforts
to those that supported Latin Americas limited role in hemispheric defense. In reality,
the program served as a conduit for World War II surplus that totaled only 317 million
dollars by 1958, and between 1950 and 1973 Latin America received about two percent
of all U.S. military assistance and about four percent of all U.S. military sales. But
military aid from the United States had a vastly disproportionate impact on the nations of
the region, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. Given how small the military budgets
were for these nations the poorer Andean and Central American countries in particular
U.S. aid could represent as much as a fifty to ninety percent increase in operating
expenditures. MAP aid, therefore, offered enormous political capital for the local leaders
who managed to control its dispensation. And given that Latin American military were
(and still are), labor intensive operations, the sale of even seemingly minimal amounts
of arms by the United States could then be dispensed with significant, often considerable,
political value accruing to specific officers.

In other words, the opportunities for

patronage were considerable.78

78

See Chester J. Pach, Jr., Arming the Free World: The Origins of the United States Military
Assistance Program (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 198-199 for discussion of

115

The threat of growing political instability in Latin America, however, led the
United States to consider increasing internal security support by the late 1950s.
American reassessment of the practice of training of the Latin American military began
the year before Castros revolution. Increasing concern about the stability of the region
led elements within the defense establishment to see a new purpose for the Military
Assistance Program. Growing Soviet efforts in Asia and the Middle East led Eisenhower
in May 1957 to push for an overhaul of the military assistance posture of the United
States. But it was Richard Nixons May 1958 goodwill trip to Latin America that
brought the region under renewed scrutiny. The vice president faced widespread popular
opposition in his stops in Argentina, Peru, and Venezuela, culminating in the dramatic
moments in Caracas where crowds surrounded and rocked his and the other cars of his
motorcade. The treatment accorded the vice president of the United States jolted the
Eisenhower administration and led the president to reconsider the supposed stability of
the region. Although CIA chief Allen Dulles could find no evidence of Communist
direction of the protests and attacks on the vice president, Eisenhower and his staff
blamed the Communists anyway. In reality, the vociferous and nearly deadly reaction to

containment, NATO, and MAP. See Table 1 in Pach, Arming the Free World, 208; John Child, Unequal
Alliance: The Inter-American Military System, 1938-1978 (Boulder: Westview, 1980), 121; and Edwin
Lieuwen, Arms and Politics in Latin America, rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1961), 198-202. In Lieuwen,
Arms and Politics, 126; and Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas & Revolution in Latin America: A
Comparison of Insurgents and Regimes since 1956 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 69. For a
detailed analysis of quantity, cost, and financial impact of U.S. military aid and sales, see WickhamCrowley, Guerrillas & Revolution in Latin America, 68-77; Brian Loveman, For La Patria: Politics and the
Armed Forces in Latin America (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1999), 152; Brian Loveman and
Thomas M. Davies, Jr., eds., The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military in Latin America, 2d rev. ed.
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 9; and Lieuwen, Arms and Politics, 175-298; and in
Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas & Revolution in Latin America, 69-70.

116

Richard Nixon reflected deep-seated economic grievances, in particular due to the

refusal of the United States to include Latin America in the Marshall Plan in 1948 and the
perception that the United States sought to deny the region post-war prosperity. Elements
within the defense establishment, therefore, sought to use MAP funding to increase
internal security capabilities in Latin America.79
Existing Mutual Security and Mutual Defense legislation, however, deliberately
limited the scope of U.S. military aid. Congress sought primarily to limit the cost to
American taxpayers and preclude overt U.S. support of dictatorships. In light of the
reaction to Nixons trip, and the continuing desire to upgrade the entire Mutual Security
System, Eisenhowers staff pushed Congress to permit MAP funding to include a
modest program . . . primarily for the purpose of internal security.
disagreed.

Congress

Senator Wayne Morse from Oregon, the Chair of the Senate Foreign

Relations Subcommittee for the American Republics, convinced Congress to deliberately

limit the scope and details of American military assistance. The 1958 Mutual Security
Act stated, categorically, that henceforth . . . internal security requirements will simply
not be taken into consideration in carrying on the military assistance program in Latin
America. Congress had a legitimate concern. The Latin America military had a long
and very public habit of inserting themselves into the political affairs of their respective

79

Chester J. Pach and Elmo Richardson, The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, rev. ed.
(Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991), 165. For analysis of the vice presidents ill-fated trip, see J.
Lloyd Mecham, The United States and Inter-American Security (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961),
341-4; Kaufman, Trade and Aid, 144-5; and Pach and Richardson, Eisenhower, 189. For the roots of Latin
American resentment, see Frederico Gil, Latin America-United States Relations (San Diego: Harcourt,
Brace, Jovanovich, 1971), 217-9; and Mecham, Interamerican-Security, 346-50.

117

countries. The military as an institution in Latin America firmly believed they held a
scared duty to protect their country, their fatherland, from the depredations of corrupt
politicians and international Communism. And they routinely viewed repression as an
effective tool for maintaining the internal security they viewed as essential to good order.
That is why Senator Morse had for years fought to prevent U.S. military aid from being
used for internal security purposes in other countries. Eisenhower, however, was more
concerned with preventing Communism than protecting democracy. And he needed
evidence to persuade Congress to allow him greater flexibility with military training. In
late 1958, Eisenhower called together another of his blue-ribbon panels to overcome
Congresss reluctance to fund greater internal security.

The president battled with

Congress over the budget, and over the cost and details of the Military Assistance
Program in particular. He wanted the Draper Committee, popularly known for its chair
General William H. Draper, to evaluate the merits of the Military Assistance Program
aid. Given the events of 1958, Latin America now had a prominent place in the Draper
Committees deliberations.80
The Draper Committee stressed the ability of MAP training to facilitate
hemispheric military orientation.

The committee noted what it termed the non-

80

Department of State, AID, Latin American Internal Security Programs Under Mutual Security
Act 1960, Foreign Assistance Acts 1961-1965, Parts I-IV, RG 59 General Records of the Department of
State, Central Foreign Policy File, 1964-66, Box 2413 FN POL 23 LA 9/11/65, iv; Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations, Mutual Security Act of 1958, 86th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 12, cited in Department of State,
AID, Latin American Internal Security Programs, 7, n. 4; Frederick Nunn, The Time of the Generals: Latin
American Professional Militarism in World Perspective (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992);
Loveman, La Patria; Lieuwen, Arms and Politics, 49-100; Loveman and Davies, eds., Politics of
Antipolitics, 89-162; Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 147-54; Pach and Richardson, Eisenhower,
167-9; Mecham, Inter-American Security, 338-9; and Kaufman, Trade and Aid, 147-52.

118

military by-products of MAP training. MAP training provided new skills to Latin
American military, such as engineering, communications, electronics, medicine,
transportation, aviation, administration, finance, and supply. These would be especially
useful to individuals when they returned to civilian life and would greatly assist the
economic development process. Here, the committee stressed the cost-benefits of such
training, whether in the U.S. or abroad, led by mobile training teams and missions.
Politically, the Draper Committee would only go so far as to mention how, on an
individual basis, U.S. armed forces personnel could transmit people-to-people the
values and traditions of the United States that would lead to an orientation in
consonance with the objectives of U.S. policy. The Draper Committee did warn about
the threat of mirror imaging in one of the classified studies they conducted. U.S.
armed services personnel ran the risk of repeating their own training with their Latin
American military students and creating models of our armed forces abroad. Such a
practice led to a duplication of effort and cost. The Draper Committee, however, argued
that, especially in underdeveloped countries, the provision of highly technical and
skilled training that served minimal functional use to the militaries in question far
outweighed their cost. MAP provided trainees a familiarization with our system, not to
mention the ability to operate MAP-furnished equipment.

But above all, the

committee concluded, MAP training developed leadership . . . unanimously considered

to be the most productive achievement of U.S. assistance. And since Latin American
nations in particular had requested U.S. military missions to help them re-pattern their
armed forces along U.S. lines, the committees report concluded that this represented a
119

desired import.

The Military Assistance Program promoted hemispheric defense,

trained Latin American military how to use U.S. equipment, and developed military
leaders who could work within the military doctrine of the United States.81
Critics of the Military Assistance Program still attacked United States support of
undemocratic regimes. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee drafted a letter to the
Draper Committee that explicitly addressed the potential for the serious distortion of
U.S. military aid, an overemphasis of which has unavoidably . . . contributed to the
maintenance in power of regimes which have lacked broad support. Such a posture has
helped to create abroad a militaristic image of the United States which is a distortion of
our national character. Furthermore, the Foreign Relations Committee worried that an
overweening emphasis on military aid by its very nature tends to create and then to
perpetuate military hierarchies which even in the most well developed countries may
endanger the very values of individual freedom which we seek to safeguard. This was
not a new concern. In late July 1957, the Operations Coordinating Board received a
memorandum concerning U.S. internal security activities in Honduras and El Salvador.
The OCB was informed that any effort by the United States to supplement its assistance
to these nations with police or internal security assistance was inadvisable, since its
tendency would be to identify the United States Government with the regimes repression

81

L.E. Harrison, 28 Oct. 1958, Non-Military By-Products of the Military Assistance Training
Program, Draper Comm., Box 20 U.S. Views re Arab Develop. . . . Some Observations, FN Non-Military
By-Products of Military Assistance Training Program, 5; and Presidents Committee to Study the Military
Assistance Program, Classified Study No. 4, 20 June 1959, Mirror Imaging, Draper Comm. Box 11
Mirror Imaging Review of Missile . . ., FN Mirror Imaging, Attachment, 15. Eisenhower Presidential
Library.

120

of a non-communist opposition, especially in Honduras.

And while all agencies,

especially State and CIA, are extremely concerned with the rate of increase of
Communist activities in these countries . . . it is increasingly doubtful that OISP program
could be a major solution in itself. In late 1958, President Eisenhower directed the
Draper Committee to consider the effect of the Military Assistance Program in forging
the image of the United States as a militaristic foe of democracy, and the relative
emphasis which should be given military and economic programs.

Eisenhowers

secretary of state concluded that anti-American sentiment was overdrawn. In a letter to

General Draper, Acting Secretary of State Christian Herter argued that while the United
States did indeed suffer an image problem, anti-American sentiment stemmed from local
considerations in various countries that generally had little to do with the Mutual Security
Program. Instead, the cooperation practiced under MAP enhanced democracy because it
served to bolster the long-term security of program countries.82
Eisenhowers staff firmly believed that promoting democracy at the expense of
anti-Communism foolishly threatened hemispheric security. Senior staff dismissed the
position that the United States should look to replicate its experience around the world.
It is impracticable for the U.S. to attempt to mold political institutions in our image,

82

Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to President, letter, 25 Aug. 1958, Military Assistance
Program, in W. A. Ellis, memorandum, 8 Apr. 1958, Balance between Military and Economic
Assistance, Draper Comm. Box 24, FN Category VII Staff Files Relative Emphasis, 1; R. P. Crenshaw
to Dearborn, memorandum, 29 July 1957, U.S. Internal Security Activities in Honduras and El Salvador,
White House Office, Spec. Asst. National Security Affairs, 1952-61, Operations Coordinating Board,
Subject, Box 3, FN Latin America, 1-2; and President to General Draper, 24 Nov. 1958, in W. A. Ellis,
memorandum, 8 Apr. 1958, Balance between Military and Economic Assistance, Draper Comm. Box 24,
FN Category VII Staff Files Relative Emphasis, 1, Hand-Written Comments. Eisenhower Presidential
Library.

121

one Draper Committee official wrote to the President, since many under-developed
countries are hardly nations in any real sense. Furthermore, power is apt to gravitate to
the army, the only institution with both force and discipline. It was incumbent upon the
United States, therefore, to develop enlightened leadership . . . which can control the
army, ensure public order, and stimulate the growth of representative political
institutions. Without American military assistance, the armed forces of less-developed
nations would be forced to divert much-needed monies in order to arm themselves.
Such independent efforts, it was argued, would involve a degree of economic
dislocation or even chaos which would make it even more likely that irresponsible
political groups, within and without the armed forces, would come into power. Finally,
in late October 1958, the former deputy assistant to the director of security affairs for the
International Cooperation Administration offered a stirring rebuttal to opponents of the
Military Assistance Program. Albert Haney argued passionately that there could be no
greater absurdity than to suggest that the U.S. should support only those countries in the
non-Communist world that are truly governed by the consent of the majority. Haney
wrote that confronted as we are against a deadly enemy who is highly disciplined and
highly organized . . . the U.S. cannot afford the moral luxury of helping only those
regimes in the free world that meet our ideals of self-government. He added pointedly
in his cover letter that in my opinion, the passing of time only serves to reinforce the
validity of his convictions.83

83

A. Ellis (Draper Comm.) to the President, memorandum, 8 Apr. 1958, Balance between
Military and Economic Assistance, Draper Comm. Box 24, FN Category VII Staff Files Relative

122

Instead, the Draper Committee contended that the Military Assistance Program
represented an excellent opportunity to improve the limited capacity of Latin American
military forces to combat subversion. The Foreign Policy Research Institute argued that
since the Latin American military offered so little in the way of tangible military assets
to the Western defense system, the United States needed to decide upon realistic and
necessary force objectives. And since the failure in Korea, Communists had reverted to
more subtle tactics of penetration infiltration, guerilla warfare, and internal coup.
Communists increasingly promoted the ideology of anti-imperialism and promise farreaching social reform as part of their effort to neutralize U.S. efforts to realize the
regions full strategic potential. The powerful call of Communist slogans played upon
longheld preconceptions of the United States as the progenitor of imperialism and
inequality and inflamed anti-Yanquismo. The critical challenge to the United States at
this time was to prevent the transplantation of guerilla movements to Latin American
soil. Consequently, free nations in the underdeveloped world should be persuaded to
create, with American help, specialized corps of countersubversive units to stymie
Communist efforts to sow insurrection. The trained members of these units should be
deployed in a wide variety of government and educational agencies to carry on political

Emphasis, 4; Albert Haney to Col. Joseph Coffey, memorandum, 20 Oct. 1958, Enclosure, T. K. Maughorn
(Assistant Director, Security Affairs) to Arthur L. Richards (Operations Coordinator, OCB), OISP Paper,
ARH, 21 June 1957, Overseas Internal Security Program Observations and Suggestions by A.. R.
Haney, Attachment, Albert Haney, memorandum, 14 June 1957, Observations and Suggestions
Concerning the Overseas Internal Security Program (OISP), White House Office, Spec. Asst. NSA,
1952-61, OCB, Subject, Box 5, FN Overseas Internal Security, 9; and Albert Haney to Col. Joseph Coffey,
20 Oct. 1958, memorandum, White House Office, Spec. Asst. NSA, 1952-61, OCB, Subject, Box 5, FN
Overseas Internal Security, 1. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

123

warfare. Keeping troops in the field would permit armies [to] become more familiar
with the terrain in which they may someday have to carry out counter-guerilla
operations. Additionally, programs such as road building would assist the military with
their Indian populations, which will not remain an inert force forever. Military civic
action could reduce the revolution of rising expectations in the countryside.

This

political warfare also had the additional benefit of limiting the opportunity for military
men to meddle in governmental affairs.84
President Eisenhower was not ready to push for internal security training in 1958.
The United States faced a difficult political challenge when it suggested giving Latin
Americas military greater capabilities to repress dissent in their countries.

MAP

legislation specifically prohibited explicit internal security training by the United States.
The final Draper Committee Report toned down its language by concentrating on the
ability of underdeveloped nations to mount internal security campaigns on their own after
modernization improvements were made via MAP training. But policymakers still had to
face the reality of the domestic political role played by Latin American military. The
prime responsibility of their armed forces, today as always, is not to guard against an
alien aggressor but to insure domestic order . . . [and] to furnish a prop either for the
constitution or for the incumbent regime.

84

Hence, U.S. military aid possessed

Foreign Policy Research Institute for Institute for Defense Analyses, 8 Apr. 1959, A Study of
U.S. Military Assistance Programs in the Underdeveloped Areas (Final Report Supplement), Draper
Comm., Box 12 Study of U.S. Military Assistance Final Report Supplement, FN Study of U.S. Military
Assistance Programs in the Underdeveloped Areas Final Report Supplement (1), 62, 64, 68-9, 75, and 77.
Eisenhower Presidential Library.

124

inextricable political pitfalls. If the U.S. assisted a regime, that equated with imperialism;
but if it did not, then it will be accused of reneging on international obligations. The
Foreign Policy Research Institute echoed a commonly held administration opinion when
it noted in April 1959 that since at any given time in this century, about half of the Latin
American republics were ruled by military leaders, often for decades, and military
coups, most of them bloodless, have occurred for a long time at a fairly regular rate, the
United States must consider the ramifications of assisting those regimes. But, in keeping
with the thrust of U.S. military policy for the region, it concurred that the United States
also must take care to avoid policies that may cause misgivings in the minds of Latin
American army generals and turn them against the idea of hemispheric defense. And
hemispheric defense required the absence of Communist governments in Latin America.
Consequently, toward the end of the 1950s internal security had become for the United
States the underlying priority for Latin American governments. Growing social and
political instability in the region threatened that internal security. Eisenhower, therefore,
looked for ways to enhance the ability of Latin Americans to keep Communists out. In
most cases, the military did that job best. So Eisenhower looked for ways to help the
Latin American military do their job. While some of his staff and the Draper Committee
pushed to make internal security training the priority in the Military Assistance Program,
Eisenhower was not ready to launch a counterinsurgency campaign for all of Latin
America. Moreover, the lack of a demonstrable external threat did not permit the White

125

House to openly promote internal security training, certainly not at U.S. direction. Fidel
Castro changed all that.85
DAMN PUNKS
The Cuban Revolution accelerated the reevaluation of U.S. military policy toward
Latin America. Fidel Castros successful overthrow of Fulgencio Batista altered the
locus of power in the Caribbean and the hemisphere.

Clearly, the United States

dominated the hemisphere politically, economically, and militarily. But the United States
now had a homegrown challenger in the battle for psychological supremacy in the
region. Eisenhower and his administration closely monitored the evolving situation in
Cuba. Castro and the revolutions intellectual voice, Ernesto Ch Guevara, publicly
attacked the remaining dictatorships in the Caribbean and in Central America, promoting
the Cuban experience as the beginning of a new wave of liberty in the region. In addition
to the rhetorical battle, U.S. intelligence believed Ch Guevara had actually tried to land
forces on the island of Hispanola. Haiti and the Dominican Republic were two of
Guevaras targets. The publication of Ch Guevaras manual for guerrilla warfare in
1960 convinced President Eisenhower that the Cuba Revolution represented nothing less
than a Soviet gambit. Guevaras hemispheric call to arms brazenly confronted U.S.
hegemony. To the United States, Guerrilla Warfare was nothing less than a declaration

85

Ibid., 72, 74-5.

126

of war.86 By mid-1960 Eisenhower was sure that Castro would have to acknowledge his
Soviet masters. That day did not come until May 1, 1961. In the meantime, the Cuban
Revolution did not change U.S. policy toward these anti-democratic regimes.

The

Eisenhower administration, for its part, would not condemn U.S. support of antiCommunist dictators of the Caribbean, Central and South America. And despite the
political capital that Fidel and Ch gained by attacking these U.S.-backed strongmen, the
United States made no move to oust them or even to attempt to get them to moderate
their behavior. Instead, Eisenhower focused on controlling the debate. If the president
could not convince Latin Americans that Castro was simply another style of caudillo,
then perhaps he could persuade Americans at home. President Eisenhower and his
advisors needed to devise the means to contain Castro in the hemisphere.
The United States formally began its reassessment of Latin American policy in
February 1959. The National Security Council met on February 12, 1959, to discuss how
the United States could enhance its training of the armed forces of the region in order to
combat the growing potential of Cuban subversion. President Eisenhower wanted the
Defense Department to be sure to provide special inducements to Latin American
officers to study at our U.S. service Academies and training centers. Debating the
recently completed NSC staff position prepared for Latin American policy, NSC 5902/1,
Eisenhower further ordered his national security team to see the several U.S. Military
Services . . . pay for everything except board and transportation of the Latin American

86

Ch Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, eds. Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies, Jr. (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1985), ix.

127

personnel. The president also dismissed his brothers insistence that no military aid be
offered to military dictatorships in the region. Agreeing with the assessment of his staff
that such a policy would create serious problems world wide, Eisenhower commented
that . . . the policy statement should at least contain a word of caution in order to satisfy
American domestic opinion. NSC 5902/1 acknowledged the necessity of promoting
internal security in the region but without U.S. association with local public safety
measures which adopt extra-legal and repressive measures repugnant to a free society.
The primary thrust of military training by the United States was to bring the Latin
American armed services in line with hemispheric military operations in the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans. The new foundation of U.S. policy in Latin America did push for
training in order to foster close military relations with the Latin American armed forces
in order to increase their understanding of, and orientation toward, U.S. objectives and
policies. While the United States expected military training would promote democratic
concepts and foster pro-American sentiments, as well as contribute to the defense of
the hemisphere by insuring its internal security, the NSC wanted Latin America to
engage in mapping expeditions, provide support units for oversees conflict, if necessary
without reimbursement, and ensure that supply purchases fit U.S. protocols and
hemispheric demands. The Cuban Revolution led Eisenhower to push his administration
for better internal security training options. Latin Americas subordinate role, however,
had not changed.87

87

396th Meeting of the NSC, 12 Feb. 1959, U.S. Policy Toward Latin America, Eisenhower
Papers, 1953-61, National Security Council, Box 11, FN 396th Meeting of the NSC Feb. 12, 1959, 9, 11;

128

The United States needed to strike a balance in its quest to prevent Cubansponsored Communist subversion in Latin America.
appearance of buttressing regional dictatorships.

Eisenhower had to avoid the

Policymakers saw little potential

external threat to the region in light of the Cuban Revolution. In the Special National
Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) dated 10 March 1959, the collective view of the CIA, State,
Army, Navy, Air Force and Joint Chiefs intelligence operations focused on the limited
external threat to existing hemispheric facilities.

Instead, the SNIE explored the

likelihood of Latin American nations raising the fees they charged for American use of
their territory, noting that in virtually all cases the U.S. is likely to be confronted with
significant pressure for increased economic benefits and other modifications of existing
arrangements. In noting the selected U.S. military facilities of concern in Panama, the
authors listed the headquarters of the U.S. Caribbean Command at Fort Amador, the
Albrook, France, and Howard Air Force Bases, the Naval degaussing station, and the
radio stations of Farfan, Galeta Island, and Summit; they did not list the U.S. Army
Caribbean School on the Caribbean side of Panama at Fort Gulick. The June 30 SNIE,
however, emphasized the worsening political situation with Cuba and the potential threat
that the Cuban Revolution might be exported to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and
Nicaragua, the nations the authors recognized as those most consistently associated with
dictatorship.

They discussed the growing influence of Ernesto Ch Guevara in

advancing Communist interests, and expressed concern about his role in promoting

and National Security Council, NSC 5902/1, U.S. Policy Toward Latin America, 17, 24, and 26-7.
Eisenhower Presidential Library.

129

insurrection against authoritarian rule elsewhere in the Caribbean. The SNIE openly
acknowledged the lack of democratic governance in the region, characterizing the ruling
power of Panama as an oligarchy. It further cited the crucial importance of American
aid to Duvalier in Haiti, which averted economic collapse thanks to the loan of a
marine training detachment. The intelligence report described the Somoza family rule
in Nicaragua as a product of its firm hold on the countrys only armed force (the
National Guard) and the administrations National Liberal Party, while it referred to the
challenges faced in the Dominican Republic because of the 30-year-old Trujillo
dictatorship. The anti-democratic history of those dictators left them vulnerable to
character attacks as it made them targets of subversion.88
The United States, therefore, worried about the public relations battle brewing
with Cuba. Eisenhowers administration needed to improve the image of the United
States.

Allen Dulles was convinced by early 1959 that Cuban-inspired Communist

activities would so injure the image of the U.S. in Latin America that war would become
a possibility. The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency felt that Castro was the
prime threat to the United States and at best a pawn of Communism. In the latter half of
March 1959, Dulles provided the acting secretary of state, Christian Herter, a briefing on
the political situation in the Caribbean area. He sought to apprise the secretary of the

88

Special National Intelligence Estimate, SNIE 100-3-59, Washington, 10 March 1959, Threats
to the Stability of the U.S. Military Facilities Position in the Caribbean Area and in Brazil, Item #111,
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, vol. V, The American Republics (Washington: GPO,
1991), 362, 370-1; and Special National Intelligence Estimate, SNIE 80-59, Washington, 30 June 1959,
The Situation in the Caribbean through 1959, Item #122, FRUS, 1958-1960, vol. V, American Republics,
393-406.

130

threat posed by Cuba in promoting the aims of international Communism in the region.
He wrote that, the present movement, centered in the Caribbean area, against the
remaining Latin American dictators is threatened with domination by international
Communism, depending on several [unspecified] contingencies, may develop into an
anti-American third force. The United States Government, he went on to warn,
would find itself associated firmly in the public mind of Latin America with the extreme
right, especially as the friend and supporter of the Dominican dictator Trujillo. Dulles
blamed the present unsettled situation on Fidel Castro who, it seemed, sought to
promote a neutralistic bloc in Latin America, while actually supporting Communist
dominated revolutionary groups conspiring against the Dominican Republic and
Nicaragua. Dulles feared that Cuban inspired revolution would precipitate a regional
war that would necessitate OAS intervention. And given that such a war would be
heavily clouded by ideological feelings and slogans, the United States, as the strongest
member of the OAS, could very easily acquire an ideological stigma difficult to avoid.
The stigma that Dulles sought to avoid: the United States is the supporter of dictators in
Latin America. Thusly tarred, the United States would find itself in a situation which
abets the cause of those who want to bring the Caribbean political situation under
Communist domination.89

89

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (Dulles) to the Acting Secretary of State (Herter),
memorandum, [Mid- or late March 1959], The Political Situation in the Caribbean Area, Item #112,
FRUS, 1958-1960, vol. V, American Republics, 372-3. See Thomas G. Paterson, Contesting Castro: The
United States an the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994);
Richard E. Welch, Jr., Response to Revolution: The United States and the Cuban Revolution, 1959-1961
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); and Jorge I. Dominguez, Cuba: Order and

131

The Eisenhower administration then concerned itself with the psychological

ramifications of the Cuban coup. The State Department followed up with a directive in
early April 1959. The twenty diplomatic missions in the region (as well as missions in
Germany, England, Belgium, Spain, Norway, Canada, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands,
Turkey, the Philippines, South Vietnam, Taiwan, and Japan), were informed that the
Department is deeply concerned at the danger of armed flareups in [the] region . . .
and [the] opportunities these activities give for infiltration and possible heavy gains by
communist elements. The circular told its missions that the department was exploring
every means possible of ameliorating tensions, including an intense study of the impact
of increased arms shipments, U.S. policy on the dictatorship issue, as well as the
rising current of feeling against military buildups in Latin America in favor of [an]
emphasis on economic development. The State Department notified its missions of a
halt in military sales except where existing commitments cannot be escaped or where
there are other well-based and clear considerations of United States interest. Missions
could expect that only such things as spare parts for civil aircraft would receive
approval for shipment, in view of [the] tense conditions in the region. For some in the
State Department, the dictatorship issue remained in the category of those artificially
induced concerns rather than a real policy problem. At a meeting of the mission Chiefs
of the Caribbean in April 1959, the United States Ambassador to Venezuela, Edward
Sparks, delivered a paper that stressed the likelihood that international Communism

Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1978). Dulles to Herter, Political Situation, Item #112, FRUS,
1958-1960, vol. V, American Republics, 372-3.

132

would capitalize on . . . economic, political, and social dislocations in the area and from
the growing anti-Americanism of the region, which the ambassador characterized as
basically a reaction by the have-nots against the biggest have nation in the world.
The Chiefs collectively focused their discussion on the various irritants in U.S.-Latin
American relations and the manner in which they were used and blown up by the
Communists.

Finally, the gentlemen agreed that Latin Americans simply did not

comprehend United States economic policies, which had the adverse psychological
effect of fostering the feeling in Latin America that the United States had rejected
policies which were not adapted to their needs.90
Eisenhower wanted to retain flexibility to meet the changing threat level in the
hemisphere. The United States needed to be aware of the danger of rising aspirations
. . . for more rapid progress toward higher living standards, for more rapid
industrialization, for governments more responsive to the popular will and for greater
civil liberties. Still, the United States could not permit this sentiment to be used as a
pretext for neutrality in the form of a desire to be disengaged from the cold war. The
NSC argued in February that the United States needed to counter the Latin tendency to
believe that the United States overemphasizes Communism as a threat to the Western
Hemisphere. Promoting private investment amidst a climate of little respect for

90

Department of State to Certain Diplomatic Missions, circular telegram, Washington, 3 April

1959, Item #116, FRUS, 1958-1960, vol. V, American Republics, 379; and Assistant Secretary of State for
Inter-American Affairs (Rubottom) to the Secretary of State [Herter], memorandum, Washington, 24 April
1959, Caribbean Chiefs of Mission Meeting, 1959, Attachment, Meeting of the United States Chiefs of
Mission in the Caribbean Area, San Salvador, April 9-12, 1959, Item #118, FRUS, 1958-1960, vol. V,
American Republics, 385.

133

contract and property rights also represented one of the recurring priorities for the
United States with the new policy statement, NSC 5902/1. Additionally, the United
States needed to be aware that while Latin America generally credits the United States
with maintaining its policy of non-intervention in the political sphere, influential
segments of Latin opinion equate the attainment of an economy less dependent on the
U.S. market and on operations of large U.S. corporations with the achievement of full
sovereignty.

Milton Eisenhower cautioned the members of the National Security

Council that Latin Americas conviction that the United States deliberately stymied
economic independence rested on the United States historical precedent of military
intervention in the region. Eisenhower felt his brothers admonitions to the contrary
resulted from an excess of caution. The president wanted official policy to leave the
United States the freedom to act regardless of the non-intervention principles enclosed in
the Ro Treaty of 1947, to which the United States was a signatory.91
Allan Dulles flatly rejected any overtures to what he considered to be a dangerous
group of spoiled children. For CIA Director Dulles, the inferior nature of the people of
Latin America magnified the threat of Communist subversion in the region. He offered a
bleak assessment of the lasting impact of the Cuban Revolution in his briefing to the
president in mid-February 1959 at the 396th meeting of the National Security Council.
Cuba, Dulles put forth, offered the most worrisome problem for the United States. He
stated that we were threatened with a partial breakdown in the machinery of

91

National Security Council, NSC 5902/1, U.S. Policy Toward Latin America, 57-9; and 396th
Meeting of the NSC, U.S. Policy Toward Latin America, 2. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

134

government. It seems the thoroughness of the Cuban Revolution had left the island
nation very few trained government personnel. More important, to Dulles, the new
leaders vainglory threatened regional disruption. Castro considers himself the man on
horseback, destined not only to liberate Cuba but to liberate all the other dictatorships in
Latin America, Dulles went on. The new Cuban officials, however, had to be treated
more or less like children. They had to be led rather than rebuffed. If they were
rebuffed, like children, they could do anything. With his brother Dr. Milton Eisenhower
present at the meeting, the president temporized and remarked that we flatter ourselves
that we are more sophisticated than our Latin American neighbors. The CIA Directors
unintentional irony continued in late June of 1959 when he delivered to the 411th
National Security Council meeting a report which listed the efforts of Castro to repeat in
the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua the success of his own movement in Cuba which
began with very small forces. The ability of the OAS to interdict these efforts and
maintain the peace, he noted, was somewhat hampered due to the general
unpopularity throughout Latin America of these dictatorships, a situation, Dulles
added, that would be funny if it were not so serious. Dulles considered the Cuban
political attack of the regions dictators as a threat to regional security.92
Cuba emerged during the course of 1959 as a major threat to regional security.
The growing weight of evidence against Cuba as a subversive threat led the Policy

92

396th Meeting of the NSC, U.S. Policy Toward Latin America, 6. Eisenhower Presidential
Library; ibid., 11; and S. Everett Gleason, memorandum, 411th Meeting of the NSC, 25 June 1959,
Significant World Developments Affecting U.S. Security, Item #121, FRUS, 1958-1960, vol. V,
American Republics, 392.

135

Planning Staff to propose a reevaluation of Americas hemispheric defense posture by the

end of that year. On January 28, 1960, Gerard C. Smith, the assistant secretary of state
for policy planning, submitted to the secretary of state a lengthy paper that called for A
New Concept for Hemispheric Defense and Development. Smith and Roy Rubottom,
the assistant secretary of state for the American republics, wrote in their cover letter that
long range developments and immediate circumstances compel an urgent and thorough
re-examination and reorientation of our military and defense policy toward Latin
America. Essentially, these State Department policymakers called for assessing in an
integrated fashion the militarys contribution to both defense and development.
Specifically, the Policy Planning Staff, headed by Henry Ramsay, argued that the U.S.
should undertake (a) to phase out programs in which Latin American forces are
unrealistically associated in continental defense roles and (b) to influence Latin American
military leaders towards greater emphasis on . . . internal development. The Policy
Planning Staff based its reassessment on the premise that there is no credible extrahemispheric threat to Latin America to which Latin American military establishments
could appropriately respond. Consequently, the militaries of the region needed to focus
on intra-hemispheric defense. The battle against Communism had come to the Western
Hemisphere and Latin America had to do its part.93

93

Child, Unequal Alliance, 147, originally cited this document as the cornerstone for
counterinsurgency policy under John F. Kennedy, placing the date for this document as 15 January 1961.
And while A New Concept for Hemispheric Defense and Development does outline many of the basic
components of what would become the Kennedy administrations revamped U.S.-Latin American military
policy, the document was initially drafted on 16 November 1959 and submitted on 18 Jan. 1960, see Roy
Rubottom (A/ARA) and Gerard C. Smith (A/PPS) to the Secretary of State, memorandum, 28 January

136

The U.S. military, however, was not ready for a wholesale change to the
hemispheric defense policy. Staffers in the Eisenhower administration argued that Cuba
was not the primary threat to regional security. The true threat to Latin America came
from Communist-nationalist exploitation of failure to make socio-economic progress.
Hence, the US should start the process of convincing the Latin American military
however long it may take that their most patriotic role, and their true defense role, lies
in executing a concept of defense through development, with all that this entails.
Admittedly, the Policy Planning Staff wrote, it will be difficult to persuade the older,
more reactionary officer groups . . . [who] will not readily drop their accoutrements of
prestige or political pretensions. Education, such as that through the proposed InterAmerican Defense College and via MAP training, offered an opportunity to influence the
next generation of officer corps. And since no government can remain in power in a
majority of the Latin American countries without the support or sufferance of the
military, the United States needed to maintain a friendly attitude on the part of the
Latin American military . . . pending the emergence of stronger civilian institutions which
can hold the military in control. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, however, rejected the
suggestion that the United States should abandon its hemispheric defense policy. On

1960, Re-examination of Basic Concepts on Which Our Military and Defense Policy Toward Latin
America Is Based, Tab B, [Henry Ramsey (PPS)], Paper, 18 Jan. 1960, A New Concept for Hemispheric
Defense and Development, Item #30, FRUS, 1958-60, vol. V, American Republics, 178, n. 5. See also
McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, 157, who cites Child, Unequal Alliance, 148; Roy Rubottom
(A/ARA) and Gerard C. Smith (A/) to the Secretary of State, memorandum, 28 January 1960, Reexamination of Basic Concepts on Which Our Military and Defense Policy Toward Latin America Is
Based, Item #30, FRUS, 1958-60, vol. V, American Republics, 174; Child, Unequal Alliance, 147; and
Rubottom (A/ARA) and Smith (A/PPS), Re-examination of Basic Concepts, Tab B, A New Concept for
Hemispheric Defense and Development, 178 and 181.

137

February 20, 1960, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs John
Irwin penned a terse note to Livingston Merchant, the undersecretary for political affairs,
that in light of the Staffs recent annual evaluation of Americas efforts with particular
emphasis on the Caribbean area there is no justification from a military point of view
for a change in the U.S. strategic concept for defense of the Western Hemisphere. In
response, Merchant replied one month later that for those in the State Department
current developments have tended to strengthen our view that there are compelling
political and economic factors which dictated that a timely review of our military
policy toward Latin America [was] necessary. It was not until July 1960 that the
Defense Department begrudgingly offered a shift in policy along the lines suggested by
the Policy Planning staff. Hemispheric defense would stay, but the United States needed
to promote internal security. For Eisenhower, the Military Assistance Program offered
the appropriate vehicle to ensure the internal security necessary for hemispheric defense.
But the president still needed congressional authorization.

He needed to convince

Congress to give him the money.94

94

Rubottom (A/ARA) and Smith (A/PPS), Re-examination of Basic Concepts, Tab B, A New
Concept for Hemispheric Defense and Development, 180-88; John N. Irwin (ASD/ISA) to Livingston
Merchant (U/POL), letter, 20 Feb. 1960, Item #31, FRUS, 1958-60, vol. V, American Republics, 190;
Livingston Merchant (U/POL) to John N. Irwin (ASD/ISA), letter, 19 Mar. 1960, Item #32, FRUS, 195860, vol. V, American Republics, 191; and J. O. Bell (DC/MSA) to Gerard C. Smith (A/PPS), memorandum,
5 July 1960, Latin American Policy Paper (NSC 5902/1), Item #36, FRUS, 1958-60, vol. V, American
Republics, 198-208.

138

COUNTERING SINO-SOVIET PROPAGANDA

Eisenhower believed that the United States needed to step up its internal security
training to counter the Communists anti-American propaganda drive. The United States
worried about the growing volume and variety of Communist propaganda and feared its
ability to foment insurrection in the wake of the Cuban Revolution. The Economic
Intelligence Committee (EIC) of the National Security Council reported in late August,
1959, that Sino-Soviet Bloc economic activities in underdeveloped areas of the Free
World were intensified during the first half of 1959. The EIC reported that trade
increased sharply in 1959 between Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with
Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay again . . . the main targets. The EIC warned that the
Soviet Bloc stepped up its promotional activities in Latin America as part of an effort
to exploit the areas continuing economic difficulties. The Central Intelligence Agency
characterized increasing Chinese propaganda as representing a wish to frustrate the
policies and weaken the position of the United States in an area of prime security
importance where political and social condition(s) in a number of Latin American
countries appear favorable to advancing the movement. Along with rising Soviet
attention to the area, the CIA reports that increasing Chinese Communist action means
that there was no evidence of rivalry . . . rather they have a common interest in
weakening United States influence in Latin America. Should that alliance rupture, the
CIA had no doubt that Latin American Communists would almost certainly remain loyal
to their long-established ties with the Kremlin. The EIC update in late February 1960
reported a greatly enhanced Soviet effort that broadened to include cultural exchanges
139

that emphasized Soviet scientific achievements and a concerted effort to woo Mexico
and Brazil, the latter of which experiencing economic difficulties. Anti-U.S. groups
stepped up their attacks on the U.S., the report advised the National Security Council,
with the most serious threat coming from revolutionary Cuba, where the Castro
regime came increasingly under Communist influence during the year. They concluded
that events further indicated a growing campaign to increase Soviet influence in Latin
America on all fronts political, economic, and cultural during the next few years.
Once again, the Eisenhower administration emphasized how international Communism
could agitate locals to incendiary action by playing upon existing conditions.95
The United States Information Agency feared that the Communist campaign
could make inroads on the people of Latin America. In early March 1960, the USIA
evaluated international Communisms successes in Latin America during the previous
calendar year. In addition to providing numerical counts of increasing membership in the
Communist Party in Latin America, details of a growing trade with the Sino-Soviet
bloc, and breakdowns of a rise in travel to Communist countries by residents of the

95

Economic Intelligence Committee, EIC-R14-S7, 28 August 1959, Economic Intelligence

Report: Sino-Soviet Bloc Economic Activities in Underdeveloped Areas, 1 January-30 June 1959, White
House Office, Spec. Assistant National Security Agency, 1952-61, National Security Council. Briefing
Notes. Box 5 FN Communist Economic Activities in Underdeveloped Countries (1) [1959-60], 8,
Summary. Eisenhower Presidential Library. See Cecil Johnson, Communist China and Latin America,
1959-1967 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), for an academic analysis that echoes official
sentiment. Central Intelligence Agency: Senior Research Staff on International Communism. 26 February
1960, Chinese Communism and Latin America, White House Office, Spec. Assistant National Security
Agency, 1952-61, National Security Council, Briefing Notes, Box 5, FN [Communist Chinese and Latin
America], ii-iii; and Economic Intelligence Committee, EIC-R14-S8, 29 February 1960, Economic
Intelligence Report: Sino-Soviet Bloc Economic Activities in Underdeveloped Areas, 1 July-31 December
1959--Summary, White House Office, Spec. Assistant, National Security Agency, 1952-61, National
Security Council, Briefing Notes, Box 5, FN Communist Economic Activity in Underdeveloped Countries
(2) [1959-60], 7-8. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

140

nations south of the border, the authors stressed the increased numbers of front
organizations as the preferred propaganda device, along with an aggressive use of the
media as outlets for the distribution of Communist publications. Perhaps the most
significant change for the better from the Communist point of view, the authors
lamented, was the growing belief of many Latin Americans that despite the political,
social, cultural and religious differences between their countries and those of the SinoSoviet bloc, the former might profit from increased contacts with the latter. By no
means did the USIA feel that Communism had won over the region, but rather that a
bits and pieces acceptance of certain aspects or features of Communism and its
techniques was growing, due in large part to Soviet economic and scientific
achievements. The USIA also warned of the marked rise in Chinese Communist
propaganda involving all Peipings various media directed at the area. Despite the
pronounced increase in Soviet prestige, they noted, local Communist parties, except in
a few countries, failed to make significant gains. These modest gains included a
bifurcated assault on U.S. policy. Official Soviet propaganda concentrated on promoting
the cultural achievements of that Communist land, stressing the accomplishments and
virtues of its system and the benevolence of its intentions.

Local Communist

propaganda, however, blamed the U.S. for all that was wrong with Latin American
countries. Not surprisingly, in no place was the anti-U.S. theme so vigorously pursued
as in Cuba, with every misfortune that country experienced perceived to be the product
of insidious U.S. imperialism. The USIA reported that many of Communisms claims
came under fire by the mainstream press in the region. Still, the propaganda arm of the
141

United States during the cold war added, such an all-inclusive doubt and denigration on
the part of Communist propagandists may have appeared ridiculous to the more
thoughtful it probably had an impact on the vast mass of uneducated in the area.96
Communist front organizations also threatened to sway the unwary in the Western
Hemisphere. General Edward Lansdale weighed in before the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)
in late June 1960 on the latest of various nefarious collateral activities of Communism.
The foremost architect of military counterinsurgency doctrine, Lansdale declared to the
nations military leaders that the Communists have given a top priority to reducing and
discrediting the Free World military power and prestige. The nuclear deterrent of the
United States had forced the Communists to take the long way to world conquest. We
must understand the enemy, Lansdale warned, if we are to be effective in countering
his propaganda and terror operations aimed to undermine vital military assets.

In

particular, the general sought to update the Joint Chiefs on the Communist use and
support of fronts used to exploit groups which ostensibly represent important
elements of the nations population . . . such as laborers, the youth, the students, the
teachers, the womens groups, and the professional class.

Lansdale stressed the

complete subservience to and financial dependence on Moscow of these fronts,

which enforced the dire lack of democratic control. Each, he warned, is controlled
by a dedicated Communist receiving instruction from Moscow, and Communists under

96

United States Information Agency, R-13-60, 3 Mar. 1960, Communist Propaganda Activities
in Latin America, 1959, Sprague Comm., Box 3, FN LA #12 (3), [Cover, Highlights, i-vii, Table].
Eisenhower Presidential Library.

142

discipline and training run these fronts from headquarters to the field.

The

Communists, Lansdale went on to say, exploit the character of local popular support
while claiming to be fighting for peace. Cuba presented a case in point, since help
for Castro fit the Communist purpose of undermining the US deterrent to Communist
aggression and the furthering of Soviet world conquest. While Lansdale acknowledged
that the United States could not find Communist fingerprints on these fronts, he had no
trouble directly attributing the current hate America campaign to operatives inside
the Castro movement. Lansdale certainly was not above a little colorful hyperbole when
he admonished the JCS, I trust that you will not discover that you were busy tying a
shoe lace while our enemy was swinging one at you from the floor, with brass
knuckles.97
Eisenhower still had to contend with a Congress reluctant to provide military aid
for internal security. His administration had begun to position itself by early 1960 for
more comprehensive measures to combat the growing threat of Communism in the
hemisphere. The president sent his acting secretary of state to Congress to argue for an
expanded use of MAP to combat Communism in our hemisphere. Christian A. Herter
reminded the House Foreign Affairs Committee in mid-February 1960 that it is an
undeniable fact that the Communist masters . . . are unrelenting in their advocacy of their
beliefs with a conviction of the irresistibility of their power and the inevitableness of

97

Brigadier General Edward G. Lansdale to Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lecture, 29 June 1960, JCS
Seminar on Collateral Activities: Communist Operations, Sprague Comm., Box 8, FN #28 Military (15),
1-6. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

143

their victory. To combat this powerful, crusading and dedicated force, the United
States must use its resources to bolster the economic strength of less developed nations,
since we long since recognized as well that military defenses are not enough to thwart
the spread of Communist control. Furthermore, the United States must combat the SinoSoviet thrust into our hemisphere with even more resources, more money. In order to
defend our way of life . . . to help others to defend themselves, to achieve progress,
America must ensure the preservation of an adequate defensive strength along with
encouragement and promotion of human betterment. Herter promoted military training
as crucial to this vision of mutual security, citing its effectiveness in Europe. But he
carefully stressed that increased self reliance was the hallmark of any program and that
training would weld the interdependence necessary to combat the scourge of
Communism. And, he reminded Congress, the United States dare not miss this chance,
because this marginal aid is, of course, of critical importance since it can mean the
difference between success or failure.98
Eisenhower could not quite overcome Congressional opposition in the spring of
1960. His administration tried to convince Congress that the United States needed to
increase its countersubversion efforts in Latin America. By that spring, the Eisenhower
administration had begun to shift its stance to one of how best to stymie the rising threat
posed by the Cuban Revolution. The Operations Control Board, one of Eisenhowers

98

Christian A. Herter, Mutual Security Steering Group, Memo 16, 16 February 1960, Statement
of the Honorable Christian A. Herter Secretary of State Before the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
February 17, 1960, Herter Papers, Box 16, FN Mutual Security Program Statement 2/17/60, 1-2, 4-5, 7-9,
and 11, Eisenhower Presidential Library.

144

favorite and most efficient entities, reported in April 1960 that the past year was marked
by intensification of Sino-Soviet bloc efforts to extend its political and economic
influence in the area . . . and of the Castro movement to establish neutralist and
subversive revolutionary Latin American organizations and activities. And the growing
security risk in Latin America was placed squarely at the feet of Castro in a memorandum
submitted to the National Security Council in early August 1960, entitled,
Responsibility of Cuban Government for Increased International Tensions in the
Hemisphere. The growth of the new communist menace led the OCB to question
whether over-all U.S. and Latin American interests are best served by the Hemisphere
Defense concept. Congress chose to reinforce that very defense posture when it revised
limitations on MAP to Latin America in Section 105(b)(4) of the Mutual Security Act of
1960, which insisted that military equipment and materials be furnished to the other
American Republics only in furtherance of missions directly relating to the common
defense of the Western Hemisphere. Eisenhowers dissatisfaction with the legislatures
unwillingness to accede to his prescription for hemispheric security did not restrict his
administrations creativity. His advisors noted that the 1954 Mutual Security Act had
prohibited the use of appropriations . . . for the dissemination of propaganda within the
United States.

And the 1958 Mutual Security Appropriation Act reaffirmed this

restriction. Congress, however, had not sought to limit propaganda activities in foreign
countries. Hence, the United States could very well make use of this latitude afforded
by lawmakers to expand the cultural aspect of the Mutual Security Program. But
Congress did provide the president a loophole in 1960. Section 105(b)(4) went on to
145

decree that internal security requirements shall not, unless the President determines
otherwise, be the basis for military assistance programs to the American Republics.
Procedurally, the president would have to investigate a specific internal security threat to
a Latin American country and present to Congress his reasons for obviating the legal
restriction. Congress, too, had cast a wary eye on events in Cuba after 1959. The
representatives and senators collectively accepted containment as the foundation of U.S.
foreign policy. Still, they were not ready to give the president free reign just yet. If
Eisenhower wanted to expand MAP training to include internal security, he would have
to ask for it on the record.99
SPRAGUE COMMITTEE AND INTERNAL SECURITY TRAINING
The United States military had for years touted its ability to reach its Latin
American counterparts in unique ways. Castros ability to twist American policy to serve
his image as a Robin Hood presaged a more hands-on policy toward seemingly
nationalist movements in Latin America. In 1960, Eisenhower commissioned the last of
his blue ribbon panels, the Sprague Committee, to establish the efficacy of U.S. foreign
information activities, such aspropaganda and psychological warfare.

99

The president

Bromley Smith (XO/OCB) to James S. Lay, Jr. (Exec. Sec. NSC), 7 Apr. 1960 OCB Report on
Latin America (NSC 5902/1), White House Office, Spec. Asst., National Security Agency, 1952-61, NSC,
Policy Papers, Box 26, FN NSC 5902/1-LA (1), 2; Marion W. Boggs (Acting Exec. Sec. NSC) to NSC,
memorandum, 5 Aug. 1960, U.S. Policy Toward Cuba, White House Office, Spec. Asst. NSA, 1952-61,
NSC, Subject, Box 4, Fn Cuba [May 1959-Sept. 1960] (5), 1-78; Smith (XO/OCB) to Lay (Exec. Sec.
NSC), OCB Report on Latin America, 6; Department of State, AID, Latin American Internal Security
Programs, 5; Donald B. MacPhail (Acting DDO/ICA) to Waldemar Nielsen (Exec. Dir. PCIAA),
memorandum, 21 April 1960, Attachment, Statutory Restrictions on Flexibility Relating to the Mutual
Security Program, Sprague Committee, Box 5, FN Psychological Aspects of Foreign Aid #19 (4), 5; and
Smith (XO/OCB) to Lay (Exec. Sec. NSC), OCB Report on Latin America, 7, Eisenhower Presidential
Library.

146

looked to the Sprague Committee to provide the considered rationale for making internal
security training part of the MAP protocols. The authors of the position paper that
became the core of the final report of the Presidents Committee on Information
Activities Abroad (Sprague Committee) wrote in May 1960 that it will not be enough to
counter Communist efforts to capture revolutions like Castros.

Instead, some

formula must be sought which will anticipate and influence developments in ways
consistent with constructive inter-American interests.

While the authors abdicated

responsibility for proposing such a solution, they did insist that United States military
training of Latin American personnel afforded important constructive influences
toward achieving the goals of NSC 5902/1. Specifically, the U.S. should make a
considerably greater effort to identify, establish contact with, encourage and cultivate
selected people . . . younger leaders who will develop into positions of greater influence.
This required a skillful effort . . . in the hard to reach area of students, teachersprofessors, intellectuals, trade union leaders, young military officers, progressive
religious leaders, some of whom are critical of the U.S. Such efforts of necessity will
have to be covert because of the sensitivity of present governments to U.S. government
contact with opposition elements, and the sensitivity of such personnel to overt
identification with U.S. activities. The Sprague Committee concluded that the rising
Communist menace in the Western Hemisphere compelled a new sense of urgency. The
threat of Cuban subversion now required the U.S. military to make full use of the very

147

personal relationships developed by U.S. military trainers with their Latin American
students.100
The Sprague Committee believed that the Mutual Security Program could
enhance American interests abroad by utilizing the psychological role of the military.
The final report concluded that since the U.S. military finds itself involved in foreign
affairs to a much greater degree than ever before in peacetime history, it had become
necessary for the United States to enhance its psychological warfare capability.
Outlining the various avenues available to U.S. military to engage in a psychological
battle against Communism, Sprague Committee staff noted on April 11, 1960, that the
United States . . . is in a position to exert important influences on the armed forces of
Latin America and other developments in the area. They listed the thousands of Latin
American military personnel who have attended schools in the United States at the
academies and command schools, along with the U.S. Army and Air Force schools at
Gulick and Albrook, Panama, in addition to the various MAAGs and military missions
to Latin American embassies.

The committee echoed a position espoused by the

Eisenhower administration for years, that U.S. training provided Latin American military
with a concentrated dose of the American way of life.

The Sprague Committee

deemed the simple presence of hundreds of U.S. military personnel and their families
at U.S. training facilities especially efficacious. Consequently, military planners were
directed to include, directly within regimens for visiting Latin Americans, training

100

Presidents Committee on Information Activities Abroad, PCIAA No. 12, 23 May 1960, Latin
America, Sprague Committee. Box 21, FN PCIAA No. 12 (1), 6, 13. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

148

exposition and explanation of some of the dynamics of American society with emphasis
on the elements adaptable to the trainees country.

We should, it was argued,

consider the role the U.S. armed forces play in the information -- psychological impact
influence -- political action area in Latin Americawhat we call for lack of better
shorthand, the P-factor, since all could agree that it is in the joint interest of the
United States and Latin America to prevent Communist penetration of the area and the
Communist takeover of the socio-economic revolution taking place there.101
The United States needed, therefore, to take advantage of MAP trainings
currently untapped power to influence potential leaders in Latin America. In the midst
of rising social unrest and Communist agitation in Latin America, the United States
needed a way to reach the power brokers of Latin American society. While mutual
security laws prohibited internal security training, those same laws directed U.S. military
trainers to develop close military relations with the Latin American Armed Forces . . .
and to promote Democratic concepts and foster pro-American sentiments among Latin
American military personnel. Unfortunately, the hemispheric defense orientation of
the United States led MAAG personnel to limit their activities to providing technical
advice and training directly related to the MAP equipment provided. The Sprague
Committee argued, however, that the ability of a particular military officer to exert any

101

Staff Notes, N.d., Sprague Committee, Box 8, FN Military #28 (12), 1 and 4; E. Brown,
memorandum, 11 Apr. 1960, Influence Potential of U.S. Military Activities in Latin America, Sprague
Comm., Box 13, FN Committee Reports-2, 1; Presidents Committee on Information Activities Abroad,
Paper, 12/F, [28 July 1960], Influence on Other Developments in the Area. Sprague Committee. Box 8.
FN Military #28 (1), 1; and Brown, Influence Potential of U.S. Military Activities, 2.

149

influence was limited only to the initiative of the officer in question. Theoretically,
since they are paid for by the host government, mission personnel are available to provide
whatever type of assistance the host government desires. The Sprague Committee
suggested that the United States armed forces could circumvent congressional restrictions
with appropriate training of MAAG personnel. And properly trained U.S. missions and
MAAGs could help to evade the political and personal favoritism . . . especially for
candidates for the more senior schools that shapes the choice of which Latin American
military students come to the United States for training. At home and abroad, the
Sprague Committee argued, U.S. officers had the opportunity to both directly, via the
command responsibility at each U.S. school, and indirectly, through their normal
activities and actions, influence their Latin American comrades. Since this is generally
recognized as perhaps the greatest single benefit currently being derived from our foreign
military

training

program,

the

authors

also

recommended

more

formal

institutionalization to promote this most salutary aspect.102

The Sprague Committee also concentrated on the ability of U.S. military
personnel to impart a slice of the American way of life to Latin Americans. The simple
presence of hundreds of U.S. military personnel and their families at U.S. training
facilities was deemed especially efficacious. Consequently, military planners sought to
include, directly into regimens for visiting Latin Americans, training exposition and
explanation of some of the dynamics of American society with emphasis on the elements

102

Annex B, The Armed Forces and Potential Leaders, Sprague Comm., Box 8, FN Military #28
(3), 1-2. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

150

adaptable to the trainees country. And given the regions poverty and desperate need
of skilled and educated people, this was a significant contribution. The authors of the
report Influence on Other Developments in the Area lamented the overweening
emphasis of military planners on hemispheric defense in contravention of Latin American
concerns. In late February 1960, the president of Brazil made manifest this concern when
he politely inquired of the United States and President Eisenhower as to whether or not
the United States, with its vast array of intelligence gathering information, could include
Brazil in its deliberation as a gesture of good will designed to improve policy
development. In addition, the Brazilian leader wanted to engage the United States in a
dialogue with the intent of increasing that countrys share of U.S. markets to promote its
own economic development. These suggestions and concerns were his way of warning
the United States against adopting a strictly East-West orientation toward the regions in
the southern hemisphere. The formation should be avoided, South of the Tropic of
Cancer, President Kubitschek wrote, of an underdeveloped area of the world, within
which problems common to underdeveloped countries would tend to create an instinctive
solidarity, more powerful than any political combination and fatal to the Western cause.
While the president of Brazil noted that his country had no intention of opening relations
with Communist China, if other Southern hemisphere nations sought a more neutral line,
he believed that the United States should accept it. Eisenhower abhorred precisely this

151

type of language.

But, the Sprague Committee argued, the demands for economic

development would lead Latin American politicians to make such concessions.103

The Sprague Committee in turn pointed to the stabilizing force exerted by the
regions armed forces and the necessity of internal security while economic development
progressed. It cited literacy efforts on the part of the military in Brazil, Colombia,
Paraguay, Guatemala, and Peru; training programs in broadcasting, graphic arts, motion
pictures, publications, etc.; bridge and road building by the Bolivian military;
transportation provided by the Dominican navy; and, in El Salvador, soldiers may elect
to complete 1 year of obligatory service and practical work in agricultural pursuits, such
as poultry and bee raising or production of corn, rice, or vegetables. In doing so, the
authors of this Sprague Committee draft wholeheartedly endorsed the unpublished Draper
Committee findings. Clearly, they sought to draw attention to the need for the United
States to adopt those recommendations. The U.S. needed, therefore, to alter its emphasis
in MAP training from hemispheric defense to internal security so that, as an OAS
ambassador put it, the armies would cease to be merely reserve forces to be used in the
event of an inter-American war, where they would be practically impotent. . . . They
would be a supplementary force for the overall realization of economic-development
programs, and a training center that would prepare thousands of Latin Americans for the
battle of production. The Sprague Committee believed that the concentrated political

103

Presidents Committee on Information Activities Abroad, 12/F, Influence on Other

Developments in the Area, 2; Juscelino Kubitschek (President of Brazil) to Eisenhower, Aide Memoire, I,
23 Feb. 1960, White House Office, S/Secy, International Trips and Meetings, Box 10, FN DDE South
American, Chron., Brazil, Feb. 23-26 (1), 1, 7. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

152

power of the Latin American military made them the ideal target audience for the United
States in the battle against Communism in the hemisphere. Only they could ease their
nations through the development process.104
The Eisenhower administration by the end of 1960 concluded that internal
security represented the best hope for preserving democracy in the hemisphere. Through
the 1950s, the Defense Department had held that all military training provided foreign
forces increases their internal security capability and that, therefore, little specific training
for this purpose is actually necessary. A new sense of urgency, however, led the
Department of Defense to promote vital internal security training, especially in
underdeveloped areas subject to subversion. Intelligence, psychological operations,
unconventional warfare and civil affairs were portrayed as but part of a gradual
reorientation of MAP training programs designed to assist the Latin American military
to maintain internal security. The Sprague Committee recommended that the Eisenhower
administration take advantage of its relationship with the Latin American military to
impart internal security training. The armed forces are a significant political power
factor present or potential in all countries of Latin America, except Costa Rica. And
the United States should exploit the influences of the armed forces of Latin America,
including those persons who may rise to positions of future military and political
leadership as the best option for promoting democracy. The committee challenged the

104

Presidents Committee on Information Activities Abroad, 12/F, Influence on Other

Developments in the Area, 6-13. Eisenhower Presidential Library. See ibid., 9-15 for details of many
other programs, all touted as beneficent to economic development and led by various nations military.

153

often-heard complaints that U.S. military aid did nothing more than buttress
undemocratic regimes . . . and contribute to a drain on the economies of these
countries.105 The Office of Special Services in the Defense Department explained:
The traditional involvement of the military directly and behind the scenes in
domestic affairs while shocking in our political context is hardly surprising in the
Latin American context. We must remember that our military forces are used
principally externally, while Latin America armed forces are by necessity
crucially linked in some manner to the maintenance of internal stability. Thus, for
larger than purely military reason, we must continue to work with and encourage
responsible leadership qualification in Latin American military forces. And the
guidance that can be transmitted through military aid activities should be in the
broad field of opinions and attitudes as well as in the narrower field of
professional military skills. Where indigenous armed services are in the
formative stage and traditions are in the process of development, or where
attitudes are changing as new officer generations replace the old, both the
informal and formal example and teaching of our military personnel, if
constructive and in the spirit of freedom and democracy, can have immense
psychological impact.106
The Latin American military, the committee argued, had served an essential pacifying
role, curbing the violence [that] has been both cause and effect of governmental
instability in Latin America. The lack of any institutional framework for the democratic
transition of government required that Latin American military men intercede to ensure
conformance with the will of the people and the preservation of democratic concepts
and institutions. The fact of the matter is, Sprague staffers contended, that in all but

105

Annex B, Armed Forces and Potential Leaders, 3; Brown, Influence Potential of U.S.
Military Activities, 1; and Brown, Influence Potential of U.S. Military Activities, Attachment B,
Influence on Other Developments in the Area, Sprague Comm., Box 13, FN Military #28 (3), 1.
Eisenhower Presidential Library.
106

Edward C. Bursk, Jr. (Off. Sp. Ops.), memorandum, 14 Sept. 1960, Sprague Committee Staff
Paper for Comment on Latin America, Sprague Comm., Box 8, FN Military #28 (8), 2, Eisenhower
Presidential Library.

154

a few Latin American countries the army can provide the only effective support to enable
a president to finish his term and pass on the reins of government peacefully to the next
administration. The Latin American military, it seems, were not just the best option;
they were the only option.107
THE EMERGENCE OF COUNTERINSURGENCY POLICY
President Dwight David Eisenhower decided to tackle the threat of Communist
subversion in Latin America on election day, November 8, 1960 when he issued
Executive Order 10893. Here, the president authorized the secretary of state and not
the secretary of defense -- to determine whether the United States should initiate training
of Latin American military to promote internal security in the region. Just over a week
before, at a meeting between senior staff members of the Department of State and the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Thomas Mann, the under secretary of state for economic affairs,
observed that the training of the Latin American military by the United States not only
had provided in the past decade a bulwark . . . for the preservation of democracy in Latin
America but also had served to keep the military element, the only stabilizing influence
in those areas, on the side of the West. Unfortunately, those present lamented the
unwillingness of Congress to sanction military training to perpetuate the right-wing
dictatorships there. But they suggested that the rise of Castro and all he represents in
South America should produce a definitely changed attitude in Congress that could

107

Presidents Committee on Information Activities Abroad, 12/F, Influence on Other

Developments, 4. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

155

mean much more support for a program of military training and equipment for internal
security. Both State and Defense Department officials felt that a program to increase
internal subversion defenses in Latin America must be tailored to the individual country.
Colombia was singled out for its need of increased training . . . to combat large scale
guerrilla tactics. The president evidently concurred and sought documentation to enable
him to commit the United States to internal security training.108
By years end, the acting secretary of state, Livingston Merchant, offered the
president reasoned justification for including military training as part of the Mutual
Assistance Program. Colombia received special attention in this first effort on the part of
the outgoing president to shore up regional defense against the new scourge of
Communist subversion.

Merchant argued that Communist influence reportedly is

increasing in the areas infested by bandits, and agents of the Castro Government in Cuba
are known to be active among anti-government groups; thus, the proposed military
assistance is needed to enable the Colombian Government to expand its campaign against
organized bandits and guerrillas, thereby promoting the security of the United States.
U.S. advisors and instructors at U.S. military facilities would provide instruction in such
subjects as counter-guerrilla warfare, intelligence, civil affairs, psychological warfare,
public and troop information, and criminal investigation.

108

An historical prcis on

Dwight D. Eisenhower to Secretary of State (Merchant), memorandum, 5 Jan. 1960,

Determinations under Sections 105(b)(4) and 451(a) of the Mutual Security Act of 1954, as Amended,
Permitting the Furnishing of Military Assistance to Colombia, White House Central File, Confidential,
Subject, Box 42, FN Mutual Security Assistance [1961] (1), 1; and Memorandum, 28 Oct. 1960,
Substance of Discussion at the Department of State-Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting, Pentagon, Item #40,
FRUS, 1958-60, vol. V, American Republics, 216-7.

156

Colombia revealed the rise of banditry since 1946 amidst the continuing political turmoil
of bloody internecine Liberal and Conservative Party violence. As a consequence, the
country seemed particularly susceptible to Communist subversion sponsored by Cuba.
All of the training is to be given at United States installations in Panama, with the
exception of a mobile training team to be sent to Ecuador. At the U.S. Army School of
the Caribbean, located at Fort Gulick, Canal Zone, the secretary of states memorandum
recommended to the president that courses in riot control, anti-guerrilla warfare, and
psychological war be provided at that facility. So advised, President Eisenhower quickly
approved the plan. He further instructed the army to begin conducting a counterguerrilla
operations and tactics course at Fort Bragg. The counterinsurgency training proposed by
the president in the first days of 1961 offered the Latin American military a truly
Eisenhower solution: American expertise for self help at a relatively low cost.109

109

Livingston Merchant (Acting Sec. of State) to the President, memorandum, 31 Dec. 1960,
Determinations under Sections 105(b)(4) and 451(a) of the Mutual Security Act of 1954, as Amended,
Permitting the Furnishing of Military Assistance to Colombia, White House Central Files, Confidential,
Subject, Box 42, FN Mutual Security Assistance [1961], (1), 1; Livingston Merchant (Acting Sec. of State)
to the President, memorandum, 31 Dec. 1960, Determinations under Sections 105(b)(4) and 451(a) of the
Mutual Security Act of 1954, as Amended, Permitting the Furnishing of Military Assistance to Colombia,
Enclosure 2, Military Assistance for Colombia Requiring Determinations, Under the Mutual Security Act
of 1954, as Amended, White House Central Files, Confidential, Subject, Box 42, FN Mutual Security
Assistance [1961], (1), [1]; John Bell (DC/MSA) to Secretary of State, memorandum, Determination
under the Third Sentence of Section 105(b)(4) of the Mutual Security Act of 1954, as Amended, Permitting
Military Internal Security Training Programs for the American Republics, Enclosure A [of D], White
House Central Files, Confidential, Subject, Box 42, FN Mutual Security Assistance [1961], (1); John Bell
(DC/MSA) to Secretary of State, memorandum, Determination under the Third Sentence, Enclosure B
[of D], Training Program for Developing the Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Capabilities of Latin
American Countries, White House Central Files, Confidential, Subject, Box 42, FN Mutual Security
Assistance [1961], (1); Dwight D. Eisenhower to Secretary of State (Merchant), memorandum, 5 Jan. 1960,
Determinations under Sections 105(b)(4) and 451(a) of the Mutual Security Act of 1954, as Amended,
Permitting the Furnishing of Military Assistance to Colombia, White House Central File, Confidential.
Subject, Box 42, FN Mutual Security Assistance [1961] (1), 1; and Dwight D. Eisenhower, 3 Jan, 1961,
Special Staff Note -- Guerrilla Training, Whitman File, DDE Diary, Box 55, FN Toner Notes -- Jan.
1961, 1. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

157

Chapter 3:
Barbarians at the Gate:
Kennedy Combats Communist Subversion in the Western Hemisphere
John F. Kennedy sought from the very beginning of his administration to change
the tenor and tone of U.S. policy toward Latin America. With his inaugural address,
President Kennedy promised to the people of Latin America: We offer a special pledge
. . . to convert our good words into good deeds . . . in a new alliance for progress. In this
Alliance for Progress, the new president conceived of a grand array of programs and
actions designed to modernize the region quickly in order, as he put it, to assist free men
and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. And to protect these nascent
democracies during this peaceful revolution of hope from becoming the prey of
hostile powers, the president declared: Let all our neighbors know that we shall join
with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. With massive
economic and military aid, and broad infrastructure improvements, Latin America was to
become a petri dish for a new policy designed to combat the spread of Communism in the
worlds underdeveloped regions. The grandeur and scope of the project tapped into a
deep well of American idealism and helped to foster a missionary zeal for programs such
as the Peace Corps, designed to carry out the good works of this new Alliance.110

110

John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, 20 Jan. 1961, http://www.umb/jfklibrary/j012061;

Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, All You Need Is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

158

President Kennedy launched the Alliance for Progress on March 13, 1961. In a
speech given at a White House Reception for Latin American diplomats, he announced
that the genius of our scientists had left the hemisphere poised to strike off the
remaining bonds of poverty and ignorance. To succeed at this moment of maximum
opportunity, however, the Americas must be prepared to battle the alien forces which
once again seek to impose the despotisms of the old world on the people of the new.
And the new president made clear the relative position of Latin America in this fight
when he characterized those nations in his inaugural address as our sister republics south
of our border. He cemented the preeminence of the United States in inter-American
affairs when he concluded his section on the Americas with the dictum let every other
power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.111
Much has been made, then and now, of President Kennedys desire to
successfully counter the Soviet Union in world affairs. In many respects, his insistence to
get tough with the Russians served as the driving force behind his foreign policy. The
example of Munich 1938, used so often to justify American policy initiatives during the
cold war, also motivated the young president. Any hint of appeasement of the forces of
aggression, he concurred, would only threaten world stability and lead to war. Maos
successful revolution in China in 1949 proved more relevant to the new president. As a

111

John F. Kennedy, address, 13 Mar. 1961, White House Reception for Latin American
Diplomats, Members of Congress, and Their Wives, RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Task
Force on Latin America, Subject and Country Files, 1961, Box 2, FN The President, 1. NARA II. And see
Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area of the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist
Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 9-10. And John F.
Kennedy, inaugural address.

159

junior Congressman from Massachusetts, Kennedy observed firsthand the domestic

political fallout for the Democratic Party and a Democratic President when the
worlds most populous nation fell to Communism. Kennedy learned in his first days as
a politician the ravages that domestic anti-Communism could wreak on his party and on
the careers of American politicians.

Communism had to be contained abroad, he

believed, to prevent its insidious spread. And, to keep his position at the head of his
Party, President had to contain Communism abroad. Hence, Kennedy initially viewed
Cuba as a litmus test, not only of his will to serve as president, but also of his political
future. That is why he held such high hopes for the clandestine plan to overthrow Castro
in the spring of 1961. A quick victory would eliminate the threat of Communism in the
hemisphere and demonstrate his gumption to the world and to voters at home. His
narrow victory in the election of 1960 made this essential. The Bay of Pigs invasion
failed miserably.

But the foray did teach the young president the need to better

coordinate within his administration.

It also left him with the persistent threat of

subversion posed by Castros revolution.112

President Kennedy believed Cuba represented a new and dangerous Soviet effort
to provoke instability in the underdeveloped nations of the world. Nikita Khrushchev
declared to the Soviet leadership only days before Kennedy took office that the future of

112

Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story (New York: Touchstone, 1979); Trumbell
Higgins, The Perfect Failure: Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the CIA at the Bay of Pigs (New York: Norton,
1987); Richard E. Welch, Response to Revolution:The United States and the Cuban Revolution, 1959-1961
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 64-100; and John Giglio, The Presidency of John
F. Kennedy (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991), 48-63.

160

Communist expansion lay in helping the colonial peoples of the world in wars of
national liberation. Eisenhower had properly chalked this up to Soviet bluster and intraCommunist wrangling. President Kennedy, instead, viewed this as a personal challenge
by the Soviet premier and a real threat to world peace. That is why Kennedy found the
ideas of Walt W. Rostow so inviting. Rostow boldly joined a chorus of economists and
academics during the late 1950s when he authored his Non-Communist Manifesto,
arguing that the conditions for western-style economic development could be stimulated
in the so-called underdeveloped areas of the world with infusions of capital and,
especially, expertise. Rostow, though, feared that during the tender and liminal takeoff stage, when a middle-class and democratic capitalism were fighting to take root,
outside forces could disrupt or even stymie the time-elapsed growth process. Hence, he
argued that maintaining internal security remained the paramount priority of those
nations. According to Rostow, the United States must develop the military techniques
necessary to ensure internal stability in underdeveloped regions. For Kennedy, Rostows
ideas gave him the considered rationale for the Alliance for Progress and the tools, in the
persons of what would be called the United States Special Forces, to insert himself,
forcefully, into Latin America and thereby prevent Cuban subversion. And since the
Latin American military already perceived Communism as the greatest threat to order in
their societies, they readily agreed with the president and his advisor and sought U.S. aid
and training.113

113

Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 20-2; Michael McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft: U.S.
Guerrilla Warfare, Counter-Insurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990 (New York: Pantheon, 1992),

161

READYING FOR WAR

The new Kennedy Administration lost little time in wedding counterinsurgency
training to the foundation of the new Latin American policy of the United States. On
January 30, 1961, just ten days after taking office, National Security Advisor McGeorge
Bundy argued that the most urgent need is for a review of basic military policy. Bundy
raised what would become the beginnings of Kennedys flexible response posture
when he specifically targeted the need to develop limited war forces as opposed to the
previous emphasis on maintaining strategic defense capabilities. In that vein, the
President requested at the February 1, 1961 meeting of the National Security Council
that the Secretary of Defense . . . examine means for placing more emphasis on the
development of counter-guerilla forces.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara

responded to the National Securitys Action Memorandum Number 2 on February 23,

informing Kennedy that his Department had initiated efforts to formulate a doctrine for
improved counter-insurgency operations. McNamara went on to add that he envisioned
the addition of some 3000 men to the Armys Special Forces and a budget augmentation

162-3; Michael Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963 (New York:
HarperCollins, 1991), 60-1; Giglio, John F. Kennedy, 46-7; Walt W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic
Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960). See principally
Ral Prebisch, The Economic Development of Latin America and Its Principle Problems (New York:
United Nations, 1950); Gunner Myrdal, Economic Development and Underdeveloped Regions (London:
Gerald Duckworth, 1957); Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East
(New York: Free Press, 1958); Max Millikin and Walt W. Rostow, A Proposal: Key to an Effective
Foreign Policy (New York: Harper, 1957); Walt W. Rostow, Guerrilla Warfare in Underdeveloped
Areas, Marine Corps Gazette, vol. 46 No. 1 (Jan. 1962), 46-9; Brian Loveman, For La Patria: Politics and
the Armed Forces in Latin America (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1999), 160-62; and Edwin
Lieuwen, Arms and Politics in Latin America, rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1961), 282-95; and for a more
optimistic assessment, see John J. Johnson, The Military and Society in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1964), 244-67.

162

of $19 million. The United States needed to develop the military capability, not only to
insert itself forcefully into trouble spots around the globe but also to permit the nations
military to train our allies around the world. In the Western Hemisphere, the most of the
repressive, right-wing dictatorships had given way to constitutional regimes, a
promising start that took place only with the active participation of the local military or
with their tacit consent.

To preserve these nascent democracies, the American

Republics desk of the State Department argued that the United States urgently needed to
furnish training in internal security techniques to military personnel of all countries,
except Cuba and the Dominican Republic. The president himself told Congress in midJune that the growing threat of Communist subversion in Latin America, and elsewhere
in the Third World, mandated a complete reevaluation of the role of military assistance.
Later that June President Kennedy had McGeorge Bundy order the secretary of defense
in NSAM 56 to inventory the paramilitary assets of the United States as a first step
toward our possible future requirements in the field of unconventional warfare and
paramilitary operations.114

114

McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to President Kennedy, memorandum, 30 Jan. 1961,
Policies Previously Approved in NSC Which Need Review, NSF, NSC Meetings, Box 313, FN #470, 1;
NSC, Minutes, Military Budgets and National Security Policy, in 475th NSC Meeting, 1 February 1961,
Record of Actions, NSF, NSC Meetings, Box 313, FN #470, 4; McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to
the President, National Security memorandum No. 2, 3 Feb. 1961, Development of Counter-Guerilla
Forces, NSF, NSAM, Box 328, FN NSAM 2, 1. Bundy instituted the action memoranda in a deliberate
attempt to replace what he viewed as the institutional lethargy of the Eisenhower administration. The new
national security advisor abhorred the lengthy process that produced the detailed reports of the National
Security Council and sought to, in the spirit of new administration, impose an activist, can-do mentality.
Ironically, his action memoranda often produced bureaucratic bottlenecks that required later memoranda to
clear up; Robert McNamara (Sec. of Def.) to McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA), memorandum, 23 Feb.
1961, Development of Counter-Guerilla Forces, NSF, NSAM, Box 328, FN NSAM 2, 1. John F.
Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, Massachusetts. [Hereafter cited as Kennedy Presidential Library];
Wymberley DeR. Coerr (ARA) to Dean Rusk (Sec. of State), memorandum, 15 Apr. 1961, ARA

163

Cubas ability to project its revolution into the nations of Latin America
represented the primary threat to U.S. national security in the hemisphere for the new
president and his staff. Reporting to the president on March 10 on his visit to South
America, Arthur Schlesinger rejected any future U.S. support of the hemispheric defense
policy and instead argued forcefully that obviously Communism is aiming to conquer
Latin America by penetration and not invasion. General Curtis LeMay worried at a key
State Department/JCS briefing on April 28, 1961 that while he doubted that Cuba per se
would ever become a military threat to the United States . . . the big problem . . . was that
all of Latin America might go Communist. The State Department in late April 1961
warned that the transformation of Cuba into a Soviet satellite represented but the latest
phase of Castros fondest dream [of] a continent-wide upheaval which would
reconstruct all Latin America on the model of Cuba.

By May 1961 the State

Department declared in a White Paper that Cuba has already become a base and a
staging area for revolutionary activity throughout the continent. In a memorandum on
May 1, 1961 to Rostow, now head of the Policy Planning Staff, a senior staff member for
the undersecretary for the American republics, Frank Devine, included a report dated

Requirements for Mutual Defense Assistance Funds, RG 59, General Records of the Department of State,
Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, Office of Central American and Panamanian Affairs, Subject and
Country Files, 1955-1963, Box 3, FN ARA U.S. Military Assistance Program for Latin America
Internal Security 1961, 1. NARA II; U.S. House, Message from the President of the United States
Transmitting the Final Report on the Operations of the Mutual Security Program, House Doc. 432, 87th
Cong., 1st Sess., 12 June 1961, 33; and McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to Robert McNamara (Sec. of
Def.), memorandum, NSAM 56, 28 June 1961, Evaluation of Paramilitary Requirements, RG 286
Records of the Agency for International Development, 1961-, Office of Public Safety, Office of the
Director, Numerical File, 1956-74, Box 5, FN IPS 7-1 Natl. Security Council (NSAM Memoranda), 1.
NARA II.

164

August 1, 1960, which contended that no sooner had the Revolutionary Government of
Cuba taken power than it launched a program for exporting its revolution to other
countries in the Hemisphere. Castros regime, Devine warned, has been organizing,
supporting, and encouraging a number of revolutionary leaders and movements in the
region with the sole intent to undermine and violently overthrow existing national
governments relying on Ch Guevaras handbook, La Guerra de Guerrillas as the
manual for hemispheric insurrection.115
Internal security training, it seemed, offered the best defense against Cuban
subversion in the hemisphere. For the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the primary threat from Cuba
was its ability to train guerrillas. Brigadier General Edward Lansdale argued that it
would be more purposeful to concentrate on developing the counterinsurgency strength
of specific countries with currently critical or potentially critical situations, such as
Vietnam and Colombia. Consequently, the State Departments Policy Planning Council
focused on internal security in the region as the most salutary curative in a series of
detailed papers issued in early June 1961. In the first of these, the PPC directed by
Rostow focused on the new political and juridical bases to defeat Communism. The

115

Arthur Schlesinger (Spec. Asst.) to McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA), memorandum, 11
Mar. 1961, Enclosure, Arthur Schlesinger (Spec. Asst.) to President Kennedy, memorandum, 10 Mar.
1961, NSF, Reg. Sec. Box 211-6, LA-General, 3/8-3/16/61, 13. Kennedy Presidential Library; Department
of State, State-JCS Meeting, 28 Apr. 1961, Substance of Discussion, RG 59 Records of the Department
of State, Records of State-JCS Meetings, 1959-1963, Box 2, FN State JCS April 28, 1961, 9. NARA II;
Department of State, Cuba, Inter-American Series 66, April 1961, NSF, Country, Box 35a, FN Cuba,
General, White Paper, 5/61, 25. Kennedy Presidential Library; and Frank J. Devine (American Republics)
to Walt W. Rostow (Policy Planning Council), memorandum, 1 May 1961, Contributions for Your Paper
on the Rationale, Tab C, Department of State, draft paper, 1 August 1960, Responsibility of Cuban
Government for Increased International Tensions in the Hemisphere, NSF, Country, Box 35a, Cuba,
General, State Dept. Rationale, 5/61, 47-8. Kennedy Presidential Library.

165

United States should seek, whenever practical, to work within the framework of
international law and seek to bolster legal forms of surveillance, strengthen internal
security capabilities, and counter, upon request of the host country, internal uprisings
inspired or supported by international Communism. The Council was quick to add that
any such operations must perforce include sustained efforts to engage in civic action with
the purpose of eliminating dissidence. In light of this subversive threat, the Policy
Planning Council issued another study that used the Chinese example to demonstrate the
pattern of popular insurrection used by Communists to achieve their political goals
abroad. Rostow unequivocally placed the Cuban Revolution within that history. The
Council then followed just days later with a detailed analysis of the crucial role played by
the armed forces of developing nations. While debating the use of the term internal
security, and suggesting that perhaps internal stability, public safety, or constitutional
order might be more psychologically palatable, Rostow emphasized that the object is
to find a phrase which would embody the positive concepts of deterrence of guerrilla
warfare, and of counter-guerrilla operations, and project the thought that, if the right
actions are taken during the deterrence stage, a country will be better able to cope with
guerrilla rebellion if it occurs. For Rostow, one of the foremost architects of economic
development policy in the Kennedy administration, counterinsurgency training became
essential to preserving the stability of emerging democracies. And Rostow intended that
the United States military would provide the requisite instruction.116

116

Department of State, State-JCS Meeting, 28 Apr. 1961, Substance of Discussion, RG 59

Records of the Department of State, Records of State-JCS Meetings, 1959-1963, Box 2, FN State JCS April

166

So armed, the president directed his administration to intensify the training of

Latin American military by the United States in NSAM 88 on September 5, 1961. The
president asked for an update on U.S. efforts to train the Armed Forces of Latin America
in controlling mobs, guerrillas, etc. Given that the military occupy an extremely
important strategic position in Latin America, President Kennedy wanted to know what
steps we are taking to increase the intimacy between our armed forces and the military of
Latin America. The president concluded that perhaps the FBI could be used to assist in
the instruction process. Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric responded to the
president that the Defense Department had undertaken a wide range of efforts in the
United States and in Latin America and that during the past two years, increasing
emphasis has been placed on training Latin Americans in riot control, counter-guerilla
operations and tactics, intelligence and counter-intelligence, public information and
psychological warfare. As part of a range of specific examples, the Deputy Secretary
noted that at Ft. Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone, an internal security type course was
established in July of this year . . . solely for military students of Latin American

28, 1961, 10. NARA II; Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale (Spec. Asst. Spec. Ops.) to Roswell Gilpatric (Dep.
Sec. of Def), memorandum, 19 June, Counter-Guerrilla Training, NSF, Meetings and Memoranda, Box
326-7, FN Staff Memos, Rostow, Guerrilla Warfare, 6/14/61-6/30/61, 2. Kennedy Presidential Library;
George McGhee (U/Pol. Aff.) to Adolf Berle (U/ARA), letter, 9 June 1961, Approaches Toward New
Political and Juridical Bases to Defeat Communism, Attachment, Department of State, Policy Planning
Council, 61-1, 9 June 1961, Approaches Toward New Political and Juridical Bases to Defeat
Communism, RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Task Force on Latin America, Subject and
Country Files, 1961, Box 2, FN National Security Council, 32. NARA II; Department of State, Policy
Planning Council, PPC 61-2, 13 June 1961, Counter Guerilla Operations, NSF, Meetings and
Memoranda, Box 3267, FN Staff Memos, Rostow, Guerilla Warfare, 6/1-6/13/61; and Department of State,
Policy Planning Council, PPC 61-5, 16 June 1961, Internal Defense of the Less Developed World, NSF,
Subject, Box 303, FN Policy Planning, PPC 61-5, n. *, Table of Contents. Kennedy Presidential Library.

167

countries and is being conducted in Spanish. Acting Secretary of State Chester Bowles
cautioned at the end of September, 1961 that given the strategic position the military
hold in most under-developed countries . . . we can do much to include in our training
programs for foreign military personnel a better appreciation of their role as builders, as
well as defenders, of the emerging democratic societies.117
By early December Kennedy had pushed the Defense Department to formulate a
specific overall policy for U.S. counterinsurgency training of the Latin American armed
forces. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had provided the president on November 30, 1961 with
a detailed proposal for new military actions for Latin America. JCSM 832-61 called
for congressional action to reduce the limitations on internal security training and
spending and a reorientation from hemispheric defense only to internal security, antisubmarine warfare, counter-insurgency, and civic action.

The Joint Chiefs

memorandum also pushed all US Government representatives in Latin America . . . to

stress that the military is an instrument responsive to democratic government and should
act in support of the constitutional principles of that government. While the president
acknowledged the general principles of JCSM 832-61, he also made it clear in NSAM
118 that he wanted the Department of State and especially the Department of Defense to

117

John F. Kennedy to the Secretary of Defense (Robert McNamara), NSAM 88, 5 Sept. 1961,
Training for Latin American Armed Forces, Item #80, Foreign Relations in the United States, 1961-1963,
vol. XII, The American Republics (Washington: GPO, 1996), 180; Roswell Gilpatric (Deputy Sec. for
Def.) to the President, memorandum, 11 Sept. 1961, NSF, NSAM, Box 331-2, FN NSAM 88, 1;
Department of Defense, memorandum, Summary of Training for Latin Americans in U.S. Military
Schools and Installations, 2, Addendum to Roswell Gilpatric (Dep. Sec. Def.) to the President,
memorandum, 11 Sept. 1961, NSF, NSAM, Box 331-2, FN NSAM 88, 1; and Chester Bowles (Acting Sec.
of State) to President Kennedy, letter, 30 Sept. 1961, NSF, NSAM, Box 331-2, FN NSAM 88, 1. Kennedy
Presidential Library.

168

provide greater clarity and specificity in their intentions and efforts. In mid-December,
McGeorge Bundy further admonished the secretary of state and secretary of defense that
the President is concerned that we may be missing an opportunity this year to develop
methods for supporting whatever contribution military forces can make to economic and
social development in less-developed countries. Bundy added that while recognizing
that civic action is not universally applicable . . . we must coordinate civic action with
other programs directed at the same goals.118
Kennedy grew increasingly impatient with the limited improvements made in
Latin Americas internal security forces as he entered his second year in office. A special
team of ranking officers from the State and Defense Departments, along with the CIA
that was sent to assess the internal security situation in South America, returned with a
report on January 10, 1962 that warned that, still, the primary threat to internal security
come[s] from the capabilities of Communists and Communist sympathizers who have
demonstrated themselves adept at discrediting, outflanking, and outmaneuvering the
governmental efforts they have not already co-opted. The Assessment Team added that
the depth of the problem meant that almost all actions by the United States would

118

McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense,
memorandum, NSAM 118, 5. Dec. 1961, Participation of U.S. Armed Forces in the Attainment of
Common Objectives in Latin America, NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 118, 1, Kennedy Presidential
Library; L. L. Lemnitzer (Chair, JCS) to President Kennedy, memorandum, JCSM 832-61, Military
Actions for Latin America (U), Item #89, Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, vol. XII, American Republics,
197-8; L. L. Lemnitzer (Chair, JCS) to President Kennedy, memorandum, JCSM 832-61, Military Actions
for Latin America (U), Appendix A, Military Actions for Latin America, Item #89, Foreign Relations,
1961-1963, vol. XII, American Republics, 199; and McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to Secretary of
State and Defense, NSAM 119, 18. Dec. 1961, Participation of U.S. Armed Forces in the Attainment of
Common Objectives in Latin America, NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 119, 1. Kennedy Presidential
Library.

169

improve internal security and the report went on to highlight a range of needs still unmet.
The next day, President Kennedy issued a stern note to Robert McNamara, stating that I
am not satisfied that the Department of Defense, and in particular the army, is according
the necessary degree of attention and effort to the threat of Communist-directed
subversive insurgency and guerrilla warfare, although it is clear that these constitute a
major form of politico-military conflict for which we must carefully prepare. Kennedy
chastised the armys effort at some length and specifically directed the Joint Chiefs to add
a general officer to direct counterinsurgency training efforts, as well as ordering that all
MAAG officers receive training at Ft. Bragg. Two days later, the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs sent the update requested in early December by NSAM 118. In JCSM 30-62,
General Lemnitzer reaffirmed that the primary role of the Latin American armed forces
in the Southern Hemisphere should be internal security and anti-submarine warfare. He
included a comprehensive chart detailing the variety of counterinsurgency training efforts
then being conducted, from action by the Defense Department in Congress to raise
internal security funding limits, to Mobile Training and Assessment Teams deployed in
Central America, and to U.S. Air Force missions to enhance Latin American
transportation of internal security forces, along with a whole host of training missions to
specific Latin American countries as well as courses taught at a variety of schools in the
United States and in Panama. The charts the general provided the president, however,
listed activities then underway most of which had already been reported to the president

170

 and did not address Kennedys concerns about a unified counterinsurgency training
mechanism, both in and outside the United States.119
President Kennedy decided on January 18, 1962, to establish the Special Group
Counter Insurgency (CI) to oversee the development of United States counterinsurgency
training and capacity. President Eisenhower had formed the Special Group as a body in
1954 to supervise U.S. activities in Guatemala. Called the Special Group 5412, so named
after the National Security Council action that authorized its formation, it continued to
serve Eisenhower throughout the 1950s on clandestine internal security matters abroad.
Kennedy appointed Maj. Gen. Maxwell Taylor to lead this small but very influential
group when he took office. Taylor had reportedly left his post as Army Chief of Staff
under Eisenhower in part because the president did not share the generals convictions
about counterinsurgency forces and also because Taylor openly challenged the defense
posture of the United States under Eisenhower. But Taylor did fit the new presidents
mold and under Kennedy the Special Group 5412 administratively displaced the

119

Washington Assessment Team, Report, 10 Jan. 1962, Report of the Assessment Team on
Internal Security Situation in South America, Item #90, Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, vol. XII, American
Republics, 203-4; President Kennedy to Robert McNamara (Sec. of Def.), memorandum, 11 Jan. 1962, RG
330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
(International Security Affairs), Box 56, FN 370.64 Jan.-July, 1962. 1-2. NARA II; L. L. Lemnitzer (Chair,
JCS) to Robert McNamara (Sec. of Def.), memorandum, JCSM 30-62, 13 Jan. 1962, Participation of US
and Latin American Armed Forces in the Attainment of Common Objectives in Latin America (U), NSF,
NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 118-JCS Proposal, Tab B, Annex A, 3/62, 2; L. L. Lemnitzer (Chair, JCS) to
Robert McNamara (Sec. of Def.), memorandum, JCSM 30-62, 13 Jan. 1962, Participation of US and Latin
American Armed Forces in the Attainment of Common Objectives in Latin America (U), Annex A to
Appendix A, (Two Charts), NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 118-JCS Proposal, Tab B, Annex A,
3/62, [1-2]; and L. L. Lemnitzer (Chair, JCS) to Robert McNamara (Sec. of Def.), memorandum, JCSM 3062, 13 Jan. 1962, Participation of US and Latin American Armed Forces in the Attainment of Common
Objectives in Latin America (U), Annex B to Appendix A, Programs Underway in support of JCSM 83261 Prior to Issuance of NSAM 118), NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 118-JCS Proposal, Tab B, Annex
A, 3/62, [1-3]. Kennedy Presidential Library.

171

Operations Control Board, one of Eisenhowers preferred administrative organs, which

Kennedys staff had found too cumbersome. On June 28, the same day the president
issued NSAM 56, Kennedy in NSAM 57 picked the Special Group to carry out
paramilitary operations against Cuba in the notorious Operation Mongoose, a series
of clumsy efforts by the CIA that failed to assassinate Fidel Castro. By the beginning of
his second year in office, the presidents dissatisfaction with the performance of the
executive branch led him to formalize supervision of counterinsurgency policy in his
administration. And in NSAM 124 President Kennedy established the Special Group
(CI) to assure unity of effort and the use of all available resources with maximum
effectiveness in preventing and resisting subversive insurgency and related forms of
aggression in friendly countries.120

120

Willard Barber and C. Neale Ronning, Internal Security and Military Power:
Counterinsurgency and Civic Action in Latin America (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1966),
97. See McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, 166-70; and Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 128, for
discussion of the formation of the Special Group and its role in Latin American policy. On U.S.
intervention in Guatemala see Richard Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of
Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982); Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter
Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (New York: Anchor Books, 1982); Piero
Gleijeses Shattered Hope: The Guatemala Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991); and Ronald Schneider, Communism in Guatemala (New York: Octagon,
1979). National Security Council, paper, NSC 5412, [12] Mar. 1954, National Security Council Directive
on Covert Operations, White House Office, NSA, Box 10, FN NSC 5412. Eisenhower Presidential
Library. See also McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, 166. On Taylor, Eisenhower, and
counterinsurgency, see McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, 512, n. 19. For the generals views on the
role of the military and U.S. policy, see Maxwell Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (New York: Harper,
1960); Barber and Ronning, Internal Security, 94; McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst, NSA) to Special Group
5412, memorandum, NSAM 57, 28 June 1961, Responsibility for Paramilitary Operations, NSF, NSC,
memos and minutes, Box 330, FN NSAM 57, 1. Kennedy Presidential Library. Also cited in McClintock,
Instruments of Statecraft, 169. See Fabin Escalante, The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against
Cuba, 1959-62, trans. Maxine Shaw, ed. Mirta Muiz (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1995), 101-13; and Rabe,
Most Dangerous Area, 137-42, on Operation Mongoose. President Kennedy to NSC, memorandum,
NSAM 124, Establishment of the Special Group (Counter-Insurgency), NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN
NSAM 124, 1. Kennedy Presidential Library; and quoted in McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, 166.

172

The Special Group (CI) carried significant weight within the Kennedy
administration. The members that constituted the Special Group (CI), as well as the
importance the president attached to the Groups purpose, assured its influence. General
Taylor had emerged as a leading architect of counterinsurgency methods to combat
Communism, and the president chose him to head the new incarnation of the Special
Group. Taylor believed that a new group was needed not only for the development of a
counter-insurgency program and the coordination of departmental tasks executing
U.S. counterinsurgency policy, but also to assure the timely identification of a problem
area

that

would

facilitate

the

appropriate

counterinsurgency forces and training.

implementation

of

American

While McGeorge Bundy drafted the initial

memorandum calling for a reformulation of the Special Group, details emerged out of an
evaluation of the Bay of Pigs disaster conducted by Richard Bissell. The Group was
initially comprised of Taylor, as the chair, along with the Deputy Secretary of Defense
Roswell Gilpatric, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs U. Alexis Johnson, the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Lemnitzer, the new CIA Director John
McCone, the National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and Fowler Hamilton, the
administrator of the Agency for International Development. Robert Kennedy rounded
out the initial complement and proved to be perhaps the most important member of the
Special Group. The attorney general shared or at least openly supported -- his brothers
conviction of the necessity of confronting Communism in this manner and fought to

173

instill the presidents sense of urgency into his administration. Robert Kennedy also
reported directly to the president immediately following each weekly meeting.121
General Taylor and the Special Group (CI) focused on developing specific
training regimens to provide the tools modernizing militaries needed to keep their
underdeveloped nations secure from Communist subversion.

A growing chorus of

experts inside and outside the administration openly viewed the Latin American military
as the key to preserving stability in that region.

On February 5, 1962, the State

Department came on board. The Executive Secretary of the Department of State, Lucius
D. Battle, offered his departments response to NSAM 118, which rejected Hemispheric
Defense as a viable policy and instead promoted the development of the Latin American
military as the essential bulwark against Castro-sponsored subversion. Furthermore,
Battle argued that amidst the destabilizing process of the Alliance for Progress, the
United States needed to secure the favor of a rising generation of younger officers
sympathetic to social and economic reform. The key, according to Battle in a revised
report issued at the very end of February, was making sure that U.S. military programs
. . . acquaint the Latin American military with the complete portfolio of communist

121

Maxwell Taylor (Chair, Special Group 5412) to President Kennedy, memorandum, 2 Jan. 1962,
Establishment of the Special Group (Counter-Insurgency), NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAMM 124, 1;
Maxwell Taylor (Chair, Special Group 5412) to President Kennedy, memorandum, 2 Jan. 1962,
Establishment of the Special Group (Counter-Insurgency), Inclosure, McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst.
NSA) to Special Group 5412, memorandum, Draft NSAM, Establishment of Special Group (CounterInsurgency), NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 124, 1-3; Robert W. Komer (Spec. Asst. Intelligence) to
McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA), letter, 31 Jan. 1962, NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 124, 1;
President Kennedy to NSC, memorandum, NSAM 124, Establishment of the Special Group (CounterInsurgency), NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 124, 1. Kennedy Presidential Library; and see Roswell
Gilpatrics comments in McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, 167.

174

techniques, including the communist tactic of alienating the military from the support of
the civilian population by depicting them as a repressive, extravagant and irresponsible
element of public life.

The State Department echoed the Draper and Sprague

Committee staffers when Battle contended that it would be particularly desirable that
the United States adapt training regimens and promote conferences and the like, which
bring U.S. and Latin American military personnel into close professional and personal
association. And to make sure that the United States kept control of the entire process,
Battle concluded that it is essential that Latin American nations receive only those
programs that would serve U.S. foreign policy interests. He went on to caution that
Defense and State personnel be strictly instructed to dissuade Latin Americans from
requesting any programs prior to a careful determination rendered by the State
Department. Simply put, Battle said do not give Latin America what they want; give
them what America knows they need. Kennedy concurred and on March 26, 1963 the
president approved the Department of States policy guidance statement of February 28
and absolved the State Department of any further responsibility under NSAM 118.122

122

For discussion, see Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 128; L. D. Battle (Exec. Sec. OSS) to
McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA), memorandum, 5 Feb. 1962, National Security Action memorandum
No. 118 Participation of U.S. and Latin American Armed Forces in the Attainment of Common
Objectives in Latin America, NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 118 State/Defense Report, 2/62, 2-3.
Kennedy Presidential Library. Also cited in Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 129. McGeorge Bundy (Spec.
Asst. NSA) to Robert McNamara (Sec. of Def.), memorandum, NSAM 140, 26 Mar. 1962, Participation
of U.S. and Latin American Armed Forces in the Attainment of Common Objectives in Latin America,
RG 286, Records of the Agency for International Development, 1961-, Office of Public Safety, Office of
the Director, Numerical File, 1956-74, Box 5, FN IPS 7-1 Natl. Security Council (NSAM Memoranda), 1.
NARA II.

175

The military establishment, however, continued to disappoint President Kennedy.

as they sought to impose their own counterinsurgency training doctrine.

General

Lemnitzer responded to the presidents mid-January complaint with a report to the

Special Group at the end of January 1962 aimed at dispelling any misconceptions which
may remain concerning the degree of awareness of the Military Services about the
importance . . . [of] military training. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
pointed out that U.S. Armed Forces personnel selected for MAAG, Mission, and
Attach duty come equipped with prior knowledge and experience related to guerrilla
warfare, counter-insurgency and counter-subversion. He argued that training in such
activities as guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, counter-subversion, combat in cities,
mob and riot control, civil affairs and military government are not new to the Military
Services. The Deputy Secretary of Defense Hayden Williams provided General Taylor
on March 2 with a report detailing his Departments response to each of dozens of
programs and proposals. The Defense Department consistently adopted a defensive and
almost confrontational tone in their communications with the president. But their reports
raised the same points and described the same programs discussed the previous
November in JSCM 832-61.

And Lemnitzer repeated the same position again in

December in the JCS response to NSAM 118. Kennedy was not satisfied.123

123

L. L. Lemnitzer (Chair, JCS) to Special Group (CI), memorandum, JCSM 530-62, 30 Jan.
1962, Military Training Related to Counter-Insurgency Matters (U), NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM
124, 1; and Hayden Williams (Dep. ASD/ISA) to Gen. Maxwell Taylor (Chair, Special Group (CI)),
memorandum, 2 Mar. 1962, Report on Participation of U.S. and Latin American Armed Forces in the
Attainment of Common Objectives in Latin America, NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 118-JCS
Proposal, Tab A-1-A-14. Kennedy Presidential Library.

176

THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Developing a uniform standard for counterinsurgency training therefore became
one of the primary responsibilities for the Special Group (CI). The continued difficulty
Kennedy encountered with the militarys ability to develop counterinsurgency led the
president by March 1962 to order staff to develop specific training objectives to ensure
uniformity of mission within the various entities that comprise the executive branch. As
early as August 1961, General Maxwell Taylor was advised of the need to institutionalize
a comprehensive course in counter-guerrilla operations. Eight months later in NSAM
131, the National Security Advisor issued a directive to the secretaries of state and
defense, the attorney general, the chairman of the joint chiefs, and the heads of the CIA,
AID, and USIA requiring training for officer grade personnel . . . who may have a role
to play in counter-insurgency programs as well as in the entire range of problems
involved in the modernization of developing countries.

The Special Group (CI)

developed the criteria contained in NSAM 131, which stressed that personnel of all
grades will be required to study the history of subversive insurgency movements, past
and present, in order to familiarize themselves with . . . Communist tactics and
techniques. Initially, the various Armed Services, the CIA, and the State Department
would be responsible for training their personnel, with military schools and colleges
taking the lead. Within the defense establishment, that responsibility fell to the Assistant
Secretary for International Security Affairs. Kennedy and his advisors were concerned
that there was an unfulfilled need to offer instruction on the entire range of problems
that would confront middle and senior grade officers (both military and civilian) who
177

are about to occupy important posts in underdeveloped countries. Hence, the president
wanted to see the institution of a school . . . on the national level to provide
comprehensive instruction for guiding underdeveloped countries through the
modernization barrier and for countering subversive insurgency.

As a matter of

urgency, the president directed the newly formed and highly secret Special Group (CI)
to explore ways of organizing such a school.124
A broad array of agencies and departments quickly responded to the president
touting their own counterinsurgency training efforts.

Roswell Gilpatric, the deputy

secretary of defense, informed the National Security Council in late February, 1962 that
the Department had established a Defense Intelligence School designed for advanced (or
post graduate) intelligence staff officer and attach training and generally will be based
on (1) the postgraduate course on intelligence presently being offered at the Naval
Intelligence School, and (2) the courses presently being offered at the Army Strategic
Intelligence School. In response to preliminary inquiries by the Special Group (CI), the
director of the Military Assistance Institute, formed a decade earlier to train Military

124

McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to Special Group (CI), memorandum, NSAM 131, 13
Mar. 1962, Training Objectives for Counter-Insurgency, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary
of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 32, FN 353,
Jan.-Mar., 1962, 1. NARA II; George McGhee (PPS) to Gen. Maxwell Taylor, memorandum, 7 Aug. 1961,
US Counter-Guerrilla Operational and Training Capabilities, NSF, NSAM, Box 331-2, FN NSAM 88, 1.
Kennedy Presidential Library; Bundy, NSAM 131, 2; William P. Bundy (ASD/ISA) to Secretary of
Defense, 22 Mar. 1962, Training Objectives for Counter-Insurgency, RG 330 Records of the Office of
the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box
32, FN 353, Jan.-Mar., 1962, 1; Roswell Gilpatric (Dep. Sec. Def.) to Secretaries of the Military
Departments, et al., memorandum, 22 Mar. 1962, Training Objectives for Counter-Insurgency, RG 330
Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
(International Security Affairs), Box 32, FN 353, Jan.-Mar., 1962, 1; Bundy, NSAM 131, 2. NARA II.

178

Assistance Program officers, reported in January of 1962 to William Bundy, the assistant
secretary of defense for international security affairs, and the Departments head of
internal security matters abroad, that the Institute routinely presented courses with
particular reference to information about the country to which MAP officers would be
assigned. By May the reports began rolling in. The National War College reported that it
offered a course on counterinsurgency training in May 1962. The acting director of the
CIA offered its first two-week counterinsurgency course on May 28, 1962 noting that
officers preparing to command, staff and country-team positions should find this course
particularly useful to identify the problems encountered in specific countries and to plan
courses of action.

The CIA offered a second counterinsurgency course in mid-

September. The Secretary of Agriculture, Orville Freeman, and the Secretary of Labor,
Arthur Goldberg, offered their Departments cooperation in connection with this most
important mission. Finally in December 1962, the Joint Chiefs submitted to Secretary
of Defense Robert McNamara a proposal to provide a counterinsurgency orientation for
senior executives of the major North American corporations operating in Latin
America.125

125

Roswell Gilpatric (Dep. Sec of State) to NSC, memorandum, 27 Feb. 1962, Establishment of a
Defense School, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 Jan.-Mar., 1962, 1; W.B. Palmer
(Dir. MAI) to ASD/ISA, memorandum, 24 Jan. 1962, Courses of Instruction at the MAI, RG 330
Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
(International Security Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 Jan.Mar., 1962, 1; Col. Goodman to Dir. of Personnel,
OSD, memorandum, 12 May 1962, Nomination to Counterinsurgency Course at National War College,
RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
(International Security Affairs), Box 51, FN 353 Apr.-May, 1962. 1; Lt. Gen. Marshall A. Carter (Acting
Director, CIA) to Robert S. McNamara (Sec. of Def.), letter, 11 May 1962, RG 330 Records of the Office
of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs),

179

The President, wrote McGeorge Bundy in National Security Action

Memorandum 163 in early June, 1962, has noted with approval the establishment of an
interdepartmental seminar on counterinsurgency at the Foreign Service Institute, entitled
Problems of Development and Internal Defense. The Foreign Service Institute at
American University in Washington, D.C. fought to become the host of the new
counterinsurgency school desired by the president in NSAM 131.

In response to

Presidential interest (as enunciated in NSAM 131), the Assistant Secretary of Defense
for International Security Affairs requested in early May, 1962 a variety of experts to
participate in an Interdepartmental Course in counterinsurgency. Specifically, William
Bundy issued his orders with the approval, and likely at the behest of, the Special Group
(CI).

The Joint Chiefs provided, at his request, expertise on the training and

employment of local military forces for countering insurgency, with particular emphasis
on the methods of developing balanced indigenous military forces without undue strain
on local resources . . . and the limitations on the use of U.S. force in internal wars. The
assistant secretary wanted the army to explain the civic action possibilities, techniques

Box 49, FN 352 Apr-June, 1962, 1-3; Lt. Gen. Marshall S. Carter (Acting Director, CIA) to Robert S.
McNamara (Sec. of Def.), letter, 18 Sept. 1962, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 55, FN 370.64 Aug.-Oct.,
1962. 1; Orville L. Freeman (Sec. of Agriculture) to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor (Chair, Special Group, CI),
letter, 14 Feb. 1962, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 56, FN 370.64 Jan.-July, 1962. 1-2; Arthur J.
Goldberg (Secretary of Labor) to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor (Chair, Special Group, CI), letter, 31 Jan. 1962,
RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
(International Security Affairs), Box 56, FN 370.64 Jan.-July, 1962. 1-2; and JCS to Secretary of Defense,
memorandum, 22 Dec. 1962. Counterinsurgency Orientation (U), RG 330 Records of the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 55,
FN 370.64 Nov.-Dec., 1962, 1. NARA II.

180

and limitations of encouraging use of military forces on nation-building projects. From

the Air Force came an explanation of the limitations and requirements of force in
countering insurgency. Specifically, the assistant for special operations, Paul Nitze,
sought a conceptual exposition of the U.S. general strategy and tactics of using force in
counterinsurgency, including the tailoring and integration of U.S. forces designed for
counterinsurgency operations (i.e., Army Special Forces, Air Force Commando Units,
Navy Seal Units). The Director of Defense, Research and Engineering was asked to
address the status of research and development in such areas as mobility, intelligence
systems, firepower, tactical command and control, logistics and operations research (to
include analytical studies, data collection, mathematic modeling of military systems,
political, social and economic systems which impinge on military systems, and historical
studies relating to counterinsurgency operations and to consider Vietnam and Thailand
as counterinsurgency laboratories when planning his lecture. Finally, the Assistant to
the Secretary of Defense for Special Operations offered his considered thoughts
regarding the causative factors of the insurgency as well as the role of international
Communism in sponsoring this type of subversion and the appropriate lessons derived
from a study of the existing situations where insurgency is active or potential.126

126

McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to NSC, memorandum, NSAM 163, [June 1962],
Training Objectives for Counterinsurgency, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 56, FN 370.64 Jan.-July,
1962. 1; William Bundy (ASD/ISA) to JCS, memorandum, 9 May 1962, Interdepartmental Course on
Under-development and Counterinsurgency, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 Apr-June,
1962, 1-3; Paul H. Nitze (ASD/SO) to Director of Defense, Research and Development, memorandum, 23
Aug. 1962, Attachment, Scope: Research and Development for Counterinsurgency, RG 330 Records of
the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security

181

The second inter-departmental seminar took place from September 4 through

October 5, 1962 and offered a roster with a whos who of Administration
counterinsurgency experts. Walt Rostow led off the seminar and provided instruction on
the United States approach to subversive insurgency, while Max Millikin, his former
collaborator from MIT, led discussion of U.S. policy and instruments of policy. Along
with another MIT professor, Lucien Pye, Millikin provided the bulk of the instruction on
issues pertaining to development, such as the requirements and prospects for nonCommunist modernization and agricultural and community development. Instructors,
often several, from every Department gave briefings to trace the history and
characteristics of subversion and the methods available to counterinsurgency.

The

interdepartmental seminar wanted students to know the details of the class conflicts of
transitional societies, such as those in much of Latin America, that made them
especially vulnerable to Communist subversion.

Of course, the seminar included a

detailed briefing on Communist goals, organization, and strategy. Country studies

occupied the bulk of the students time as representatives from the various federal
agencies and armed services presented accounts of their current and proposed efforts at

Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 July Sept. 1962, 1; Paul H. Nitze (ASD/SO) to Secretary of the Air Force,
memorandum, 23 Aug. 1962, Attachment, Scope: Limitations and Requirements of Force in Countering
Insurgency, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary
of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 July Sept. 1962, 1; Paul H. Nitze (ASD/SO)
to Undersecretary of the Army for International Affairs, memorandum, 23 Aug. 1962, Attachment, Scope:
Civic Action Programs, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 July Sept. 1962, 1; and Paul H.
Nitze (ASD/SO) to Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (ISA), memorandum, 23 Aug. 1962, Attachment,
General Scope, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 July Sept. 1962, 1. NARA II.

182

nation building in the underdeveloped regions of the world, Southeast Asia, Africa, the
Near East, and Latin America. The State Departments Chief of Special Operations
asked William Bundy to give the commencement address. The Foreign Service Institute
held a third seminar November 19-21, 1962. Secretary of State Dean Rusk offered his
insight and the format continued with instruction on the role of development programs
offered by the United States, the nature and threat of subversion, and, finally, emphasis
on the country studies approach.127
Not surprisingly, the various branches of the U.S. Armed Services weighed in to
promote their specialized training. The army reported in May, 1962 that a number of
foreign students attend relatively long courses at the Infantry School and at the Command
and General Staff College, parts of which are devoted to counter-insurgency problems,
counter-guerrilla techniques and tactics.

While the air force acknowledged that it

needed to increase its COIN [counterinsurgency] forces to a level that will be capable of
properly fulfilling requirements, the service did point out that the U.S. Air Force had the
capability to provide training for foreign Air Force personnel which is directly or
indirectly related to counter-insurgency, with such courses as disaster control, sentry
dog handling, tropic survival, air police and surface explosive disposal. Furthermore,

127

George A. Carroll (CSO/S), memorandum, 30 Aug. 1962, Distribution of Syllabus for Second
Session of Interdepartmental Seminar on Problem of Development and Internal Defense
(Counterinsurgency), Enclosure, Syllabus, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 55, FN 370.64 Aug.-Oct.,
1962. [9]; ibid., [2]; ibid., [6]; ibid., [2]; ibid., [3-4]; ibid., [15-20]; George A. Carroll (CSO/S) to William
Bundy (ASD/ISA), memorandum, 20 Sept. 1962, Interdepartmental Seminar on Counterinsurgency, RG
330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
(International Security Affairs), Box 55, FN 370.64 Aug.-Oct., 1962, 1; and Carroll, Distribution of
Syllabus, [1]. NARA II.

183

the Air Force possessed Facilities . . .to train foreign personnel in the use of the C-130A,
B, and E aircraft as well as the C 118 and C 119 aircraft. The latter has the capability of
air dropping personnel and equipment and has a relatively good short field takeoff and
landing characteristic. In late May, 1962, the vice commander of the Air University,
Maj. Gen. C.H. Pottenger, wrote that in July, the Air University will present the twoweek USAF Counterinsurgency Course to 250 specially selected USAF officers.128
The navy, like every other branch of the Armed Forces, revamped its instructional
curricula to include counterinsurgency training at all levels. The Assistant Secretary of
the navy reported in mid May, 1962 that identifiable blocks of instruction (history,
sociology, government, political science, and economics) which contribute to
counterinsurgency background are included in navy courses at the undergraduate and
graduate level. The navy, he went on, incorporated counterinsurgency training into
everything from OCS, pilot and submarine training as well as supply corps school,
hospital administration school and dental officer indoctrination course. At the Naval
War College, the stated objective of the counterinsurgency course is to prepare senior
and middle grade officers . . . country teams, Command, Staff, and Departmental

128

Col. Thomas A. Kenan to Dir. Policy Planning Staff, memorandum, 24 May 1962, Report
Required by NSAM 131, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the
Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 51, FN 353 Apr.-May, 1962. 1; Eugene
M. Zuchert (Sec. of the Air Force) to Secretary of Defense, memorandum, 9 May 1962, (U) Expansion of
USAF Counterinsurgency (COIN) Capability, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 56, FN 370.64 Jan.-July,
1962. 1-2; Kenan to Policy Planning Staff, Report Required by NSAM 131, 2; and Maj. Gen. C.H.
Pottenger (Vice Commander, Air University) to Gen. Williston B. Palmer (Dir. Military Assistance, OSD),
letter, 29 May 1962, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 Apr-June, 1962, 1-3. NARA II.

184

positions of responsibility which involve planning and conduct of counterinsurgency

operations.

The Naval War College emphasized the historical background of

counterinsurgency. In particular, the War College wanted students to understand the

political, economic, social and military conditions in which the selected insurgency
occurred together with strategy tactics, and techniques used by the communists and by
those who sought to counter the insurgency.

Obviously, the Navy Special Forces

represented the most important counterinsurgency arm of that Departments

counterinsurgency capability.

SEALs received training not only in underwater

demolition but also in ranger training, airborne training, and jungle operations.
Naval MAAGs were sent to Fort Bragg in the spring of 1962 for a special six-week
course in counter-guerrilla operations, which stressed the causative factors underlying
these movements, and the doctrinal tenets therein.129
The army reasonably felt its Special Forces units made it the most likely branch to
take the lead in counterinsurgency operations and training. Certainly, the armys Green

129

Fred Korth (Asst. Sec. of the Navy) to Secretary of Defense, memorandum, 12 May 1962,
Training Objectives for Counterinsurgency (U), Enclosure, Navy and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency
Education and Training Program, 1; idem, Training Objectives for Counterinsurgency (U), Enclosure,
Navy and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Education and Training Program, Tab 1, Naval War College
Pilot Course in Counterinsurgency, Appendix 1, Navy Three-Level Program for Counterinsurgency
Indoctrination, 1; idem, Training Objectives for Counterinsurgency (U), Enclosure, Navy and Marine
Corps Counterinsurgency Education and Training Program, Tab 1, Naval War College Pilot Course in
Counterinsurgency, 1; idem, Training Objectives for Counterinsurgency (U), Enclosure, Navy and
Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Education and Training Program, Tab 1, Naval War College Pilot
Course in Counterinsurgency, Appendix 1, Navy Three-Level Program for Counterinsurgency
Indoctrination, 2-3; ibid., 2; idem, Training Objectives for Counterinsurgency (U), Enclosure, Navy and
Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Education and Training Program, Appendix 1, Navy Three-Level
Program for Counterinsurgency Indoctrination, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 51, FN 353 Apr.-May,
1962, 5; ibid., 6; and ibid., 7.

185

Berets were the poster child of Kennedys counterinsurgency push. By May 1962, the
army had offered counterinsurgency courses at the Special Warfare Center, the primary
Special Forces base at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, to military from Europe, the Near and
Far East, and the Western Hemisphere. Five more courses took place in the last half of
1962. In addition, the army operated training facilities at Fort Gulick in the Panama
Canal Zone, in [Bishiwaka] Okinawa and at Oberammergau in Germany for foreign
military personnel. The latter two facilities did not open until fiscal year 1962. The West
German camp had trained fifteen Greek cadres by May 1962, while the Bishiwaka base
held over 300 courses for Asian nationals, primarily for those soldiers from Taiwan,
South Korea, Thailand, and South Vietnam. In response to the greater demand that
currently exists for such training in Vietnam, the army planned that one course will be
given in Vietnamese in August 1962. By June 5, the Deputy Secretary for Defense
Roswell Gilpatric provided the national security advisor with a report detailing the extent
to which counterinsurgency training had permeated the defense education establishment,
from every senior military school of the United States Armed Forces to specialized
training for special forces in all four branches of the military. Furthermore, Gilpatric told
McGeorge Bundy that the number of foreign officers being afforded counter-insurgency
instruction and training . . . is steadily increasing . . . and MAAG and Mission Chiefs
have been oriented appropriately to explain these programs of instruction to their
clients.130

130

A. M. Rosenthal, Guerrilla Base Gets U.S. Priority; Elite Officers Trained in Special Okinawa
School, NYT, 10 Sept. 1961, p. A1, col. 4; Col. Thomas A. Kenan to Dir. Policy Planning Staff,

186

The foremost agency established to direct the modernization projects of the

United States responded to the Presidents request for an update on counterinsurgency
training on June 20, 1962. In a report to the Special Group (CI) in July 1962, the Agency
for International Development (AID) touted its broad range of counterinsurgency
activities and pledged its continuing cooperation in the inter-agency program to
develop internal defense plans for all friendly countries threatened by subversion. AID
listed six courses for Agency personnel and two for foreign nationals. The primary
course for AID personnel going overseas . . . has now doubled the length of its former
program to two weeks of special Area Study and two days emphasis on the scope of the
Communist threat. At the Institute for Internal Development at Johns Hopkins, a more
intensive twenty-one week course is given to middle grade personnel. Here, instruction
concentrated on the various activity sectors make toward economic development, and

memorandum, 24 May 1962, Report Required by NSAM 131, Tab B, Number of Courses Provided to
Foreign Nationals at the U.S. Army Special Warfare School, Fort Bragg, N.C. by Fiscal Year, RG 330
Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
(International Security Affairs), Box 51, FN 353 Apr.-May, 1962, 1-5; John E. Moore (Director of
Personnel, OSD), administrative memorandum, 26 June 1962, Counterinsurgency and Special Warfare
Course, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of
Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 Apr-June, 1962, 1; Kenan to Dir. Policy Planning
Staff, memorandum, Report Required by NSAM 131, 2; idem, Report Required by NSAM 131, Tab E,
Number of Counter-Insurgency Courses Provided Foreign Nationals at Oberammergau by Fiscal Year, 1;
idem, Report Required by NSAM 131, Tab D, Number of Counter-Insurgency Courses Provided
Foreign Nationals at Okinawa by Fiscal Year, 1; idem, Report Required by NSAM 131, Tab A,
Number of Counter-Insurgency Courses Provided Foreign Nationals in the CONUS and Overseas by
Fiscal Year, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary
of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 51, FN 353 Apr.-May, 1962. 3. NARA II; Roswell
Gilpatric (Dep. Sec. of Def.) to McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA), memorandum, 5 June 1962,
Department of Defense Report on NSAM 131 Training Objectives for Counter-Insurgency, Annex,
Counterinsurgency Training for U.S. and Foreign Officers in U.S. Military Schools and Colleges, 1-12;
and idem, Department of Defense Report on NSAM 131 Training Objectives for Counter-Insurgency,
NSF, NSAM, Box 334, FN NSAM 131Training Objectives for Counterinsurgency Memoranda, 6/16/4/62, 2. Kennedy Presidential Library.

187

emphasizes the effect on economic development of social, cultural, and political

conditions. For senior AID officers, A.I.D. is participating in the development of the
national modernization and counter-insurgency school.

Not surprisingly, AID

emphasized economic and social development programs through the Alliance for
Progress in Latin America. In the same vein, the agency described the range of civic
action activities around the world as part of their specific counter-insurgency programs.
In the region, AID wrote that programs are underway in Honduras, Paraguay, Bolivia,
Peru, Ecuador, and Chile. Guatemala and Brazil have had programs for a number of
years with the need for U.S. assistance.131
INTERNAL SECURITY
Congressional opposition to internal security training of Latin American military
continued to limit the Kennedy administrations efforts to counter Communist subversion
in the hemisphere. The State Department placed the blame squarely in the hands of
Senator Wayne Morse, the Democratic senator from Oregon. Staffers correctly argued
that Senator Morse sought to inhibit internal security training by requiring the president
himself to make the determination of need. Morse had a well-earned reputation as an
opponent of internal security aid and training to Latin America.

131

He chaired the

Frank M. Coffin (Dep. Admin. for Ops., AID) to Special Group (CI), memorandum, 18 July
1962, A.I.D. Supported Counterinsurgency Activities, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 56, FN 370.64
Jan.-July, 1962. 1, 5; Dennis Brennan (PRCA/AID) to Special Group (CI), memorandum, 20 June 1960,
Agency for International Development Response to NSAM 131, RG 330 Records of the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 51,
FN 353 June-August, 1962. 2; ibid., 5; ibid., 2; Coffin to Special Group (CI), A.I.D. Supported
Counterinsurgency Activities, 2-3. NARA II.

188

Subcommittee for the American Republics on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
and, as such, he possessed considerable institutional power over legislation, especially
with regard to military and economic aid packages. Morse did not hesitate to make use
of his authority, and during his tenure he routinely frustrated Defense and State
Department staffers with his pointed attacks on their efforts to secure funding for various
programs.132
Morse opposed military aid to Latin America on principle and as a matter of
policy. He preferred a deemphasis on military assistance. Morse did not believe that
the United States should fund dictators, and he felt that military aid and training
especially for internal security only strengthened the repressive control of the tight
little oligarchies that so plagued the region. Like many in Congress, Morse also feared
that giving military hardware to Latin America would lead to an arms race that would
invite chaos and intra-regional warfare.

Most important, Congress felt that the

emphasis on military assistance took money and effort away from economic
development. Morse laid the groundwork for Jimmy Carter when he opposed military
aid to dictators and argued that the United States should reward democratic or
democratizing governments with economic aid, and exclude aid to authoritarian ones.

132

J. O. Bell (DC/For. Asst.) to Dean Rusk (Sec. of State), memorandum, 26 June 1961,
Proposed Presidential Determination under Section 105(b)(4) of the MSA of 1954 [sic], as amended,
permitting the use of funds to furnish military assistance to Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador,
Honduras, Guatemala, and Haiti, Item # 77, Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, vol. XII, American Republics,
177; Arthur Robert Smith, The Tiger in the Senate: The Biography of Wayne Morse (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1962); and Mason Drukman, Wayne Morse: A Political Biography (Portland: Oregon
Historical Society Press, 1997).

189

Morse did believe in economic development. He fought with Eisenhower to increase

economic assistance for just that reason. But, he did not accept President Kennedys
insistence that internal security training must become a concomitant part of the
process.133
The Kennedy administration worked hard to convince Congress to dispense with
the restrictions on internal security training to Latin America. The Defense Department,
amidst strenuous efforts to reorient its hemispheric defense posture, had argued in May
1961 that the United States must in our military programs, give first priority to measures
designed to meet the threat to internal security. In order to secure the necessary funding,
the Department of Defense wanted the administration to seek the repeal of the Morse
Amendment to foreign aid, which limited foreign aid to internal security purposes. The
presidents supporters in Congress did manage to modify somewhat the language in the
1961 funding to include some new concepts. The law spoke generally about the United
States responsibility to provide military training and assistance that would permit
friendly countries . . . to deter or, if necessary, defeat Communist or Communistsupported aggression . . . to maintain internal security, and creat[e] an environment of
security and stability in the developing countries.

133

On June 26, 1961, the State

Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Sub-Committee on the American Republics, South

America: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela, Wayne Morse Study Mission to
South America, 86th Cong., 2d sess., 20 Feb. 1960 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1960), 7;
ibid., 2; J. Lloyd Mecham, The United States and Inter-American Security, 1889-1960 (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1961), 339-40; Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, South America, Wayne Morse
Study Mission, 7-8; and Burton I. Kaufman, Trade and Aid: Eisenhowers Foreign Economic Policy, 19531961 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 133-52.

190

Department sought authorization for internal security training for the nations of Central
America and Haiti for just those reasons. But Congress balked and kept the longstanding congressional prohibition on aid to Latin America for internal security
purposes in Section 511(b) of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act. Sub-section 105(b)(4)
prohibited internal security aid unless the president determines otherwise. Congress
did not forbid internal security assistance; it adopted the Morse Amendment to force the
president to officially commit the United States to internal security training in Latin
America. In Executive Order 10893, President Eisenhower sought to side-step Congress
by authorizing the secretary of state to make the decision. So Morse revised the 1961
Mutual Security Act and revised section 105(b)(4), which now required that the president
promptly reports such determination to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and
to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. In late September 1961, Chester
Bowles, acting for Secretary of State Dean Rusk, revised the request for internal security
training in Central America according to the new dictates of the 1961 act.134

134

Haydn Williams (Dep. ASD/ISA) to Adolph Berle (Chair, Task Force on Immediate Problems
in Latin America), Letter, 28 June 1961, Enclosure, paper, 19 May 1961, U.S. Policy for the Security of
Latin America in the Sixties, Item # 76, Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, vol. XII, American Republics, 176;
Department of State, AID, Latin American Internal Security Programs, 10. NARA II; in ibid., 11; J. O. Bell
(DC/For. Asst.) to Dean Rusk (Sec. of State), Memorandum, 26 June 1961, Proposed Presidential
Determination under Section 105(b)(4) of the MSA of 1954 as amended, permitting the use of funds to
furnish military assistance to Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and
Haiti, Item #77, Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, vol. XII, American Republics, 176-7; Department of State,
AID, Latin American Internal Security Programs, 11. NARA II; Chester Bowles (Acting Sec. of State) to
President Kennedy, Memorandum, 29 September 1961, Determination Under Sections 511(b) and 614(a)
of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as Amended, Permitting the Use of Funds in Order to Furnish
Military Assistance to Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, Item #85,
Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, vol. XII, American Republics, 187-90; Department of State, AID, Latin
American Internal Security Programs, 11. NARA II; and Bowles to President Kennedy, Determination
Under Sections 511(b) and 614(a) of the Foreign Assistance Act, Item #85, Foreign Relations, 1961-1963,
vol. XII, American Republics, 187-90.

191

The Kennedy administration failed again in 1962 to remove the restrictions on

internal security aid and training. As Chair of the Subcommittee for the American
Republics, Morse could effectively stifle any alterations to internal security aid including
the amount of funding available. So in March 1962, Undersecretary of State George Ball
went through legislative channels to ask Senator Morse if he would consider raising the
ceiling on MAP spending for internal security training and aid. Instead, the senator
responded that he felt the limit should be lowered. The Chief of Western Hemisphere
Affairs for the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security
Affairs testified before Congress in June of 1962 in an effort to repeal the prohibition
against the use of military assistance for internal security purposes in Latin America.
General W. A. Enemark argued that, in order for the Alliance for Progress to succeed, the
security forces in Latin America . . . must have the effective force required to cope with
subversion.

Congress refused to modify the restrictions any further, so Kennedy

responded by once again delegating authority to the secretary of state. Senator Morse in
a letter to the secretary of state in August, 1962 put his concerns bluntly when he
countered that for many years I have been appalled at the apparent lack of concern of the
Department of Defense in providing political orientation and training to foreign military
personnel brought to the United States for training. He went on to stress that he and the
members of his subcommittee felt very strongly that officials in the executive branch

192

did not seem to comprehend the implications and dangers of our military assistance
programs to Latin America.135
The administration then took its fight to the full Foreign Relations Committee.
Senator Hubert Humphrey stepped in with a strongly worded note to the secretary of
defense in October of 1962 requesting an update on United States counterinsurgency
capabilities. In a politely worded response, the secretary provided a detailed report of the
variety of American assets, ranging from the various special forces units to the
development of specific weapons and surveillance devices. Secretary McNamara then
sent a letter to Senator Richard Russell, the Chair of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, and assured him that the full services of the Department of Defense are
available for any briefings you might care to receive. It would not be until 1965, with
the war in Vietnam underway, that Congress would agree to lift the restrictions on MAP
training and aid for internal security.136

135

Edwin M. Martin (AS/ARA) and Carl Marcy (COS, Senate For. Rels. Comm.) Department of
State, memorandum of conversation, 30 Mar. 1962, Military Assistance Program for Latin America, RG
59 Records of the Department of State, Central Decimal File, 1960-1963, Box 1516, FN 720.5/2-962, 1;
Department of State, AID, Latin American Internal Security Programs, 15; U.S., House Committee on
Foreign Affairs Hearings, Foreign Assistance Act 1962 87th Cong., 1st Sess, 268, cited in Department of
State, AID, Latin American Internal Security Programs, 15; Hollis B. Chenery (Dir., Program Review and
Coord. Staff, AID) to Gen. W. B. Palmer (Dir. Military Assistance, ASD/ISA), letter, 9 July 1962, RG 330
Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
(International Security Affairs), Box 51, FN 353 June-August, 1962. 1; William P. Bundy (Act. Asst. Sec.
of Def.) to Secretary of the Army, memorandum, 19 Aug. 1962, Role of the U.S. in Providing Military
Assistance to Latin American Countries, Inclosure, Wayne Morse to Dean Rusk (Secretary of State),
letter, 3 Aug. 1962, RG FN Latin America, OSA 092.3 Latin America FW 8-9-62, 1-3. NARA II.
136

Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey to Robert S. McNamara (Sec. of Def.), letter, 18 Oct. 1962, RG 330
Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
(International Security Affairs), Box 55, FN 370.64 17 Sept. 1962. 1; Robert S. McNamara (Sec. of Def.) to
Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, letter, 27 Nov. 1962, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 55, FN 370.64

193

In the meantime, training Latin American police offered a means to bypass

congressional opposition to internal security aid while buttressing Latin American
capabilities to secure public safety. The decision to actively include Latin American
police forces in the maintenance of internal security represented a departure from
Eisenhowers policy.

In June 1959, Assistant Secretary of State for the American

Republics Roy Rubottom argued that any effort to bolster police internal security
capacity in Latin America would be unrealistic. He pointed out that the traditional
role of the military in the area is to maintain mutual security. And Rubottom believed
that if the United States sought to encourage police and constabulary type units to usurp
this function, such a policy would likely derail our objectives of promoting political
stability and economic progress. But in NSAM 56, President Kennedy called for an
assessment of American paramilitary assets, and police were considered by the
president among the more valuable to combat subversion. The president sought with the
Alliance for Progress to collapse the modernization process in Latin America. The
disruptions produced by the modernization of traditional societies, argued one senior
Defense Department report, generated increased anomic behavior of individuals which
manifested itself in crime, delinquency, alcoholism, suicide, and mental disease.

Nov.-Dec., 1962, 1; William P. Bundy (Dep. Asst. Sec. of Def.) to Secretary of Defense, memorandum, 26
Nov. 1962, Inadequacy of This Countrys Preparations for Waging Effective Guerrilla and CounterGuerrilla Warfare, Tab A-D, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the
Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 55, FN 370.64 Nov.-Dec., 1962, 1; and
Robert S. McNamara (Sec. of Def.) to Richard Russell (Chair, Senate Armed Services Committee), letter, 5
Dec. 1962, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of
Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 55, FN 370.64 Nov.-Dec., 1962, 1. NARA II.

194

Expansion of police, the report continued, would also seem an essential condition to
battle both individual and group-based disruptive behavior and thereby maintain the
necessary national stability that will encourage foreign and domestic investments
leading to economic growth.137
The capacity of Latin American police forces to meet this need, however,
remained dubious. General Lemnitzer, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed
the president on May 19, 1961 that the training of civilian police forces in Latin
America is under [the direction of] the International Cooperation Administration. The
general pointed out that in Latin America, police forces are suspect and among the first
to be reorganized by the new administration as a necessary adjunct to the administration
remaining in office. Furthermore, he noted pessimistically that in most Latin American
countries the security and police forces have a marginal capacity to perform their
functions. Latin American nations could generate popular support for internal security
measures against Communist subversion, the general argued if the police forces are
developed as a competent professional force with minimal overtones of political
connivance. Robert Kennedy believed that the FBI could assist Latin American nations.

137

Roy Rubottom (A/ARA) to NSC, memorandum, [June 1959], NSC 5902/1, RG 59 General
Records of the Department of State, Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, Records of the Special Assistant on
Communism, 1958-1962, Box 2, FN NSC Miscellaneous 1959, 1; McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to
Robert McNamara (Sec. of Def.), memorandum, NSAM 56, 28 June 1961, Evaluation of Paramilitary
Requirements, RG 286 Records of the Agency for International Development, 1961-, Office of Public
Safety, Office of the Director, Numerical File, 1956-74, Box 5, FN IPS 7-1 Natl. Security Council (NSAM
Memoranda), 1; McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, 189; and Atlantic Research Corporation to
ASD/ISA, 15 Aug. 1962, A Study of National Internal Security Forces with Special Reference to the Role
of Such Forces in the Context of an International Agreement for General and Complete Disarmament,
Interim Report, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 57, FN 381 Oct. 1962, 38. NARA II.

195

But, he warned the president in September 1961, the FBI had found that the security
arrangements in a number of countries were extremely deficient and he feared whether
existing Latin American forces would be able to stifle a riot used as prelude to a
Communist overthrow. By Thanksgiving 1961, the national security advisor, at the
behest of the president, directed the secretary of state in NSAM 114 to develop a
continuing review . . . of the over-all problem of United States support of friendly police
and armed forces and their training in riot control, counter-subversion, counterinsurgency, and related operations.138
The president pushed to make sure that his administration did not neglect this
facet of internal security. On February 19, 1962, President Kennedy issued NSAM 132
to Fowler Hamilton, the Administrator of the Agency for International Development.
Kennedy wrote, I desire the appropriate agencies . . . to give the utmost attention and
emphasis to programs designed to counter Communist indirect aggression. For the
president, police assistance programs . . . are also a crucial element in our response to
this challenge. While acknowledging that such programs may seem marginal in terms
of focusing our energies on those key sectors which will contribute most to sustained

138

L. L. Lemnitzer (Chair, JCS) to President Kennedy, memorandum, 19 May 1961, Training of

Police and Armed Forces of Latin America (U), Presidents Office Files, Country Files, Box 121A FN
LA, Security, 1960-1963, 1-2. Kennedy Presidential Library; Robert F. Kennedy (Attorney General) to
President Kennedy, memorandum, 11 September 1961, Item #82, Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, vol. XII,
American Republics, 182. Noted in Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 131; and McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst.
NSA) to Dean Rusk (Secretary of State), memorandum, NSAM 114, 22 Nov. 1961, Training for Friendly
Police and Armed Forces in Counter-Insurgency, Counter-Subversion, Riot Control and Related Matters,
RG 286 Records of the Agency for International Development, 1961-, Office of Public Safety, Office of the
Director, Numerical File, 1956-74, Box 5, FN IPS 7-1 Natl. Security Council (NSAM Memoranda), 1.
NARA II. See also Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 131, and McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, 189, for
discussion of the implementation of NSAM 114.

196

economic growth, Kennedy went on to argue that they are indeed justified since they
contribut[e] to internal security and resisting Communist-supported insurgency.
President Kennedy reiterated his desire to coordinate foreign police training in NSAM
146, issued in late April 1962, which established an Inter-Departmental Committee on
Police Assistance Programs to work under the direction of the Special Group (CI). This
committee spent the late spring and early summer developing a the coordinated structure
for police training of foreign nationals. The administration re-emphasized the importance
of police forces in the overall counterinsurgency scheme in June 1962 in NSAM 162.
When McGeorge Bundy issued the new guidance for developing country internal
defense plans, to the Special Group (CI), he took care to emphasize the continued need
to develop U.S. and indigenous police and paramilitary and military resources. Bundy
insisted that a broad array of police, intelligence, and psychological measures were
needed to maintain internal security, itself the necessary prerequisite for economic
development.139
Kennedy once again turned to the Agency for International Development to
ensure public safety in Latin America. The Inter-Departmental Committee on Police
Assistance Programs issued its final report on July 24, 1962. The Presidents intelligence

139

President Kennedy to Fowler Hamilton (Admin. AID), memorandum, NSAM 132, 19 Feb.
1962, Support of Local Police Forces for Internal Security and Counter-Insurgency Purposes, Records of
the AID, Office of Public Safety, Office of the Director, Box 5, FN National Security Council (NSAM
Memoranda), 1-2. NARA II; President Kennedy to Special Group (CI), NSAM 146, memorandum, 24 Apr.
1962, Inter-Departmental Committee on Police Programs, NSF, Meetings and Memoranda, Box 336-7,
FN NSAM 146, 1-2. Kennedy Presidential Library; McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to Special Group
(CI), memorandum, NSAM 162, 19 June 1962, Development of U.S. Indigenous Police, Paramilitary, and
Military Resources, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 58, FN 381 Apr.-June, 1962, 1-4. NARA II.

197

advisor, Robert W. Komer, wholeheartedly supported the preeminent role proposed for
AID and argued for an action memorandum to make that effective. On August 7, 1962,
President Kennedy implemented the Committees recommendations when he issued
NSAM 177.

The president insisted that the US should give considerably greater

emphasis to police assistance programs.

Under this directive, AID now bore the

responsibility for the planning and training of indigenous police forces. The president
told the agencys top administrator, Fowler Hamilton, that same day that
I consider this program an important part of our effort to help the less-developed
countries achieve internal security essential if our major economic development aid is to
help create viable free nations. The president added further that I hope that you . . .
will give your personal attention to hiring the best professionals you can find to launch
this re-invigorated effort. And to keep the review of police training current, AIDs
Special Assistant for Internal Defense Joseph Wolf announced on December 13, 1962 the
first meeting of the new permanent body, the Interagency Police Group.140

140

William Brubeck (Exec. Sec., ICPP) to McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA), memorandum, 24
July 1962, Report of the Committee on Police Assistance Programs, Enclosure 2, Report of the
Interagency Committee on Police Assistance Programs in Newly Emerging Countries, NSF, NSAM, Box
336-7, FN NSAM 146, 1-22; Robert W. Komer (Spec. Asst. ISA) to the President, note, 29 July 1962,
Report of the Committee on Police Assistance Programs, NSF, NSAM, Box 336-7, FN NSAM 146, 122; President Kennedy to NSC, NSAM 177, memorandum, 7 Aug. 1962, Police Assistance Programs,
NSF, NSAM, Box 338-9, FN NSAM 177, 1-3. Kennedy Presidential Library. See also McClintock,
Instruments of Statecraft, 189-90; and Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 132. Kennedy, NSAM 177, 1-3.
Kennedy Presidential Library; President Kennedy to Fowler Hamilton (Admin. AID), letter, 7 Aug. 1962,
NSF, Meetings and Memoranda, Box 336, FN NSAM 146, 1. Kennedy Presidential Library; and Joseph
Wolf (Spec. Asst. Internal Def.) to Frank M. Coffin (Acting Admin. AID/OPS), memorandum, 13 Dec.
1962, Police Assistance Program, RG 286 Records of the Agency for International Development, 1961-,
Office of Public Safety, Office of the Director, Numerical File, 1956-74, Box 5, FN IPS 7-2 Special Group
(CI) Meetings December 1962, 1. NARA II.

198

AID was ready for its new responsibilities. The agency had already responded to
the earlier directive, NSAM 132, when it proudly reported to the Special Group (CI) in
June 1962 that the number of technicians assigned doubled in 1962 [and] . . . the number
of police officials trained at U.S. expense increased by 100 in 1962 over the 1961 level.
AID quickly responded again when it established the semi-autonomous Office of
Public Safety on November 1, 1962 to carry out NSAM 177. The director of this office
reported to the Special Assistant for Internal Defense within the AID hierarchy. By
December, the Office reported to the president that spending on police training had
doubled for the coming years budget.

And, for AID, the most significant

development during the last eighteen months was the establishment of an Inter-American
Police Academy in Panama . . . opened in July 1962 at Ft. Davis in the Panama Canal
Zone. Many in the administration viewed the Inter-American Police Academy as a key
component to maintaining internal security in Latin America. The idea originated at the
end of September, 1961. Chester Bowles as the Acting Secretary of State offered his
considered thoughts to the presidents call in NSAM 88 with the proposal of establishing
an American police training facility as a clearing house for riot control and other training.
In mid-October of that year, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy responded in
NSAM 106, where he wrote that the President has expressed interest in the proposal . . .
to establish a U.S. police academy, preferably in a Caribbean location such as the Canal
Zone. The Alliance for Progress spawned a broad array of administrative entities to deal
with the pernicious threat of Communist subversion.

Among these, reported the

Caribbean Command in its annual history for 1962, was the establishment, on an interim
199

basis, of the Inter-American Police Academy. But IAPA was more than just one of a
hodgepodge of programs; Kennedy saw upgrading Latin American police capabilities as
a serious need.141
AID took care to detail the success of the first six months of the Inter-American
Policy Academy. AIDs Office of Public Safety reported to the Special Group (CI) just
before Christmas 1962 that since the opening July 2, ninety officers from 15 Latin
American countries have graduated from IAPA courses. In the Basic Police Operations,
course instruction included:

traffic, firearms, investigations, riot control, defensive

tactics, police organization and administration, training for police instructors, human and
public relations, and counter-intelligence.

AID praised the coordination and

cooperation between the IAPA and nearby U.S. military training centers and noted that
students from the IAPA and the Military Police School at Fort Gulick participated in a

141

Frank M. Coffin (Dep. Admin. for Ops. AID) to Special Group (CI), memorandum, 18 July
1962, A.I.D. Supported Counterinsurgency Activities, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 56, FN 370.64
Jan.-July, 1962, 4. NARA II; McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, 189; AID, general notice, 1 Nov.
1962, Office of Public Safety (O/PS), NSF, NSAM, Box 338-9, FN NSAM 177, 1-2. Kennedy
Presidential Library; Department of State and AID to President Kennedy, memorandum, 1 Dec. 1962,
Police Assistance Programs, RG 286 Records of the Agency for International Development, 1961-,
Office of Public Safety, Office of the Director, Numerical File, 1956-74, Box 5, FN IPS 7-2 Special Group
(CI) Meetings December 1962, 1-8. NARA II; McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, 189; Chester
Bowles (Acting Sec. of State) to President Kennedy, letter, 30 Sept. 1961, Enclosure, Chester Bowles
(Acting Secretary of State) to President Kennedy, memorandum, 30 Sept. 1961, Counter-Subversion
training for Latin American Police Forces, NSF, NSAM, Box 331-2, FN NSAM 88, 1-4. Kennedy
Presidential Library; McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to Dean Rusk (Sec. of State), memorandum,
NSAM 106, 19 Oct. 1961, Request for Report on Proposal to Establish a U.S. Police Academy, RG 286
Records of the Agency for International Development, 1961-, Office of Public Safety, Office of the
Director, Numerical File, 1956-74, Box 5, FN IPS 7-1 Natl. Security Council (NSAM Memoranda), 1.
NARA II; Macon A. Hipp, Headquarters, Caribbean Command, Caribbean Command Annual History,
1962, HMF, 8-2A.8 AA 1962, VI, 7. CMH. See Barber and Ronning, Internal Security, 98; Brian
Loveman and Thomas M. Davies, Jr., eds., The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military in Latin America, 2d
rev. ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 164; and John Child, Unequal Alliance: The InterAmerican Military System, 1938-1978 (Boulder: Westview, 1980), 156.

200

joint exercise on a riot situation where the correlated role of the civil police and the
military in riot control was demonstrated. AID allocated additional monies that enabled
IAPA to help to defray cost of travel to the Academy, something the U.S. Army
Caribbean School had done for years. IAPA echoed many of the early U.S. Army
Caribbean School difficulties, including recruiting experienced civil police personnel
with the language fluency required. And like the school, IAPA touted the professional
relationships developed between students at IAPA which, it was contended, will result
in increasing communication and cooperation between countries.142
By 1970, AID trained nearly 3000 Latin American police. Brazil was the Latin
American nation most likely to take advantage of the executive course. Training, and the
desire for police training, however, did not mean that Latin Americans shared U.S.
notions of how to employ said police training. In March 1964, the head of the Office of
Public Safety for Latin America reported to AID that the police and security units lack
capability to contain terrorist offensive, particularly if state of siege is lifted as
anticipated. D. R. Powell attributed this weakness to the government of Guatemala,
which he contended has not yet properly supported the development of civil police
capabilities and has not really cooperated with our efforts to date.

Perhaps, he

continued, the government hoped for a resumption of large scale urban disorder and

142

Department of State, AID/OPS to Special Group (CI), memorandum, 19 Dec. 1962, Status
Report on Inter-American Police Academy (IAPA), RG 286 Records of the Agency for International
Development, 1961-, Office of Public Safety, Office of the Director, Numerical File, 1956-74, Box 5, FN
IPS 7-2 Special Group (CI) Meetings December 1962, 1. NARA II; ibid., 2; ibid., 3; ibid., 1; and ibid., 2.

201

terrorism could be an excuse for the regime to reinstate siege and demonstrate
continuing need for military rule.143
The Office of Public Safety fought to keep the training of Latin American police
at Ft. Davis in the Canal Zone. In early proposals promoting IAPA, AID listed the cost
savings of a Panama facility and the unusual opportunity for concentrated effort to
increase capabilities of police and related internal security agencies in the security and
counter subversion field. General Enemark, in his capacity as Regional Director of the
Western Hemisphere for the Department of Defense, agreed with the desirability of
locating school in Canal Zone. The man assigned to head the proposed Academy, Frank
Coffin, pushed the benefits of a Panama location with Roswell Gilpatric in late March.
Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs William Bundy believed
it would be a mistake to establish the school at Ft. Randolph in Washington, D.C.
because of the inadequate facilities that existed there. Instead, the national security
advisors brother recommended that the school should be located in the Canal Zone,
because the U.S. Army and Air Force already have schools there for training Latin
Americans [in] internal security activities closely related to those which will be taught at
the IAPA. But the formation of the Interagency Police Group on December 1, 1962

143

Department of State, AID/OPS, Training Statistics FY 63-FY 70: Worldwide Summary, RG

286 Records of the Agency for International Development, 1961-, Office of Public Safety, Office of the
Director, Numerical File, 1956-74, Box 11, FN IPS 21-2 Reports and Statistics (OPS Training Program),
[Latin America], [1]; ibid., [1-12]; and D. R. Powell (OPS/LA) to Administrator AID/OPS, memorandum,
17 Mar. 1964, Guatemala Internal Defense Plan Quarterly Progress Report, RG 286 Records of the
Agency for International Development, 1961-, Office of Public Safety, Office of the Director, Numerical
File, 1956-74, Box 6, FN IPS 7-2 Special Group (CI) Meetings March 1964, 1. NARA II.

202

eventually spelled the end of training in Panama. The IPG wanted to maintain direct
control of the training regimen and formed the International Police Academy in
Washington, D.C. in mid-December.

The Commanding General of the U.S. Army

Caribbean countered that it is important for the Academy to remain in Panama, in order
to foster understanding and respect between the military and police students to be trained
at Fort Gulick and the Academy. The Special Group (CI) disagreed and the Canal
Zone School was phased out.144
THE SUBVERSIVE THREAT
President Kennedy wanted systems in place to enable the United States to respond
to the subversive challenges posed by international Communism in the underdeveloped

144

Brig. Gen. William Enemark (Reg. Dir. Western Hemisphere, OSD/ISA) to CINCARIB,
telegram, [10], Apr. 1962, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the
Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 Apr-June, 1962, 1-2; E.C.
Kennely (AID/OPS), 14 Feb. 1962, Summary Facts Concerning the Inter-American Academy Panama
Canal Zone, RG 286 Records of the Agency for International Development, 1961-, Office of Public
Safety, Office of the Director, Numerical File, 1956-74, Box 5, FN IPS 7-2 Special Group (CI) Meetings
Prior to Nov. 1962, 1; Brig. Gen. W.A. Enemark (Reg. Dir., West. Hemi, ASD/ISA) to Lt. Gen. OMeara
(CGUSARCARIB), Telegram, [13] Mar. 1962, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 Jan.Mar.,
1962, 1; Frank M. Coffin (Dep. Administrator IAPA) to Roswell Gilpatric (Dep. Sec. of Def.), letter, 29
Mar. 1962, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of
Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 Jan.-Mar., 1962, 1; William S. Bundy (ASD/ISA)
to Roswell Gilpatric (Dep. Sec. of Def.), memorandum, 5 Apr. 1962, Inter-American Police Academy,
RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
(International Security Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 Apr-June, 1962, 2; Department of State, AID to the
President, memorandum, 1 Dec. 1962, Police Assistance Programs, RG 286 Records of the Agency for
International Development, 1961-, Office of Public Safety, Office of the Director, Numerical File, 1956-74,
Box 5, FN IPS 7-2 Special Group (CI) Meetings December 1962, 1-8; Joseph Wolf (Spec. Asst. Internal
Def.) to Frank M. Coffin (Acting Administrator, AID/OPS), memorandum, 13 Dec. 1962, Police
Assistance Program, RG 286 Records of the Agency for International Development, 1961-, Office of
Public Safety, Office of the Director, Numerical File, 1956-74, Box 5, FN IPS 7-2 Special Group (CI)
Meetings December 1962, 1; Thomas M. Davis (Exec. Sec., Special Group (CI)), memorandum, 20 Dec.
1962, Minutes of the Meeting of the Special Group (CI), RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary
of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 55, FN
370.64 Nov.-Dec., 1962, 2. NARA II; and McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, 190.

203

world.

He had pushed and prodded his administration to develop guidelines and

protocols for the United States. He created the Special Group (CI) and infused it with
purpose and power. The United States now boasted a variety of agencies and a plethora
of avenues through which Kennedy could assert his authority around the world. The
International Police Academy represented simply one avenue designed to assure public
safety in Latin America, and the move of the facility reflected the growing desire to direct
the U.S. activities from Washington, D.C. It also reflected the shifting importance of
Latin America within the Kennedy administration.

While the region held great

significance for the president during his first year in office, and the construction of Soviet
missile bases in Cuba bid fair to consume the world in nuclear war in the fall of 1962,
Southeast Asia increasingly occupied the attention and concern of President Kennedy
and his staff. The growing threat of Communist subversion in Laos, the increasingly
violent opposition to the Diem regime in South Vietnam, and the growing tensions in
Thailand, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the region bespoke the need for greater internal
security capabilities in underdeveloped nations to help combat this insidious form of
Communist aggression. Ideally, Kennedy wanted the Special Group (CI) to assess threat
levels and coordinate the United States response. To do that, the United States still
needed a standard method, an operating guide, for assessing, developing, and ensuring
internal security within the underdeveloped world. The Special Group (CI) provided the
requisite manual as the summer of 1962 waned.145

145

McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, 161-257; and Barber and Ronning, Internal Security, 91-

140.

204

The Special Group (CI) completed work on the U.S. overseas internal defense
policy on August 24, 1962. The various Departments and agencies within the United
States government had struggled to adequately define the range of threats that existed
within underdeveloped countries. Special Assistant for Internal Defense Joseph Wolf
noted in late May 1962 that in addition to the effective mobilization of the local
governments political, economic, and military and psychological resources and their
employment in a unified and coordinated manner, the historical success of insurgent
movements has rested on their ability to enlist popular support against real or fancied
grievances together with their capacity for employing minimum force to create
widespread insecurity.

For the United States, therefore, any program to counter

Communist subversion and insurgency must include both measures designed to eliminate
causes of discontent. Accordingly, Kennedy added the Director of the United States
Information Agency to the Special Group (CI) in NSAM 180. The president wanted an
effective propaganda mechanism to counter the blandishments of worldwide
Communism. When briefing the secretary of state on NSAM 182, Deputy Secretary of
State U. Alexis Johnson, now the executive secretary of the Special Group (CI), directed
Secretary Rusk to the sections of the paper on the Causes of Insurgency [and]
Communist Doctrine and Tactics, as expressed in stages. U. Alexis Johnson also
stressed the pre-eminent role of the State Department, particularly that of the ambassador,
in assessing and implementing what he essentially viewed as a political problem.
General Taylor disagreed, and made sure to insert an important addendum to NSAM 182
that directed the Department of Defense to support the CIA in clandestine operations as
205

well as to execute assigned [deleted word] operations . . . which require . . . military

experience of a kind and level peculiar to the Armed Services.146
Specifically, NSAM 182 sought the defeat of (1) communist inspired, supported,
or directed subversion or insurgency . . . which are inimical to U.S. national security
interests in all countries of the free world, primarily those that are underdeveloped. This
new manual for combating subversion drew attention to the success of insurgents in
Algeria, French Indochina, and Cuba to emphasize the reality of this threat and the
example each of these movements represents to future insurgent groups. The Special
Group (CI) argued that Communist subversion followed clearly defined stages, from
building a power base to limited tactical armed action, to strategic resistance against
established regimes. Since each stage had its own purpose designed to take advantage of
the vulnerability of developing nations, the United States must perforce deny to
Communism the efforts of the people of underdeveloped nations. Civic action programs

146

McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to Special Group (CI), memorandum, NSAM 124,
Counterinsurgency Doctrine, Tab A, U.S. Overseas Internal Defense Policy, NSF, NSAM, Box 338-9,
FN NSAM 182, 1-31. Kennedy Presidential Library; Joseph Wolf (Spec. Asst. Internal Def.) to Area
Desks, memorandum, 20 May 1963, Special Group (CI) Review of Country Internal Defense Plans,
Enclosure, Joint Message #CA-236, 6 July 1962, Internal Defense Plans Revised Format, RG 286
Records of the Agency for International Development, 1961-, Office of Public Safety, Office of the
Director, Numerical File, 1956-74, Box 5, FN IPS 7-2 Special Group (CI) General, 2; McGeorge Bundy
(Spec. Asst. NSA) to NSC, memorandum, NSAM 180, 13 Aug. 1962, Membership of the Special Group
(CI), RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of
Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 55, FN 370.64 Aug.-Oct., 1962. 1; U. Alexis Johnson
(Special Group (CI)) to Secretary of State, memorandum, 8 Aug. 1962, U.S. Overseas Internal Defense
Policy, RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Executive Secretariat, Records of the Special Group
(Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 1, FN Special Group (CI) 8/1/62-10/31/62, 1-2. NARA II; and
McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to Special Group (CI), memorandum, NSAM 124,
Counterinsurgency Doctrine, Tab A, U.S. Overseas Internal Defense Policy, Annex A, Supplementary
Role of the Department of Defense, NSF, NSAM, Box 338-9, FN NSAM 182, 1. Kennedy Presidential
Library.

206

served the crucial dual purpose in this phase of the battle; they built up fragile developing
infrastructures while securing the will of a developing nations people to economic
development. The Special Group (CI) did not ignore psychological warfare. Instead,
psychological warfare served as a tactic, like counterinsurgency, that could be applied to
negate subversive action and promote acceptance of economic and social changes
fostered to promote economic modernization.

Development represented the clearest

method to forestall, permanently, Communist expansion in the underdeveloped world.

And it was the Special Group (CI) which bore the responsibility of identifying the
existing threat levels and applying the commensurate action by the broad range of U.S.
assets available. While the Agency for International Development would bear the lions
share of the responsibility for stimulating economic development in threatened nations, a
key component of the Department of Defenses responsibilities included providing
police, paramilitary, and military equipment, advisors, and training to insure the requisite
internal security.147
The growing emphasis the Special Group (CI) placed on Southeast Asia in 1962
directed its approach to enhancing Latin American internal security. With the mandate of
NSAM 182, the Special Group (CI) spent most of their time reviewing country reports
and assessing the level of United States response. Initially, President Kennedy directed

147

Bundy to Special Group (CI), NSAM 124, Counterinsurgency Doctrine, Tab A, U.S.
Overseas Internal Defense Policy, 1; ibid., 2-3; ibid., 8-10; ibid., 13-19; ibid., 6-8; and idem, NSAM 124,
Counterinsurgency Doctrine, Tab A, U.S. Overseas Internal Defense Policy, Annex C, Model Outline
of Country Internal Defense Plan, NSF, NSAM, Box 338-9, FN NSAM 182, 1-2. Kennedy Presidential
Library.

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the Groups efforts toward Laos, South Viet-Nam, [and] Thailand.

And for the

remainder of 1962, Laos occupied much of the Groups attention. By the time the
Special Group (CI) completed NSAM 182, the level of administration attention toward
Southeast Asia had increased. In October of 1962, the Groups general concern for
Southeast Asia led to a concerted effort in Indonesia. The members offered to the
President a detailed plan of action that included an analysis of the economic history of
the nation and how their current balance of payments status affected their capacity to
meet their foreign obligations, primarily to the Netherlands. To assist this young nation,
and to forestall the Communist advance in the region, the Special Group (CI)
recommended the intercession of substantial foreign aid along with military and
paramilitary training. Most of all, the members were concerned about the potential for
non-Communist insurgent activities, which the Special Group (CI) warned could be
found throughout Indonesia. To this end they wanted to send in the Peace Corps. In
mid-June 1962, the president accepted General Taylors recommendation and widened
the scope of the Special Groups purview in NSAM 165 when he added several countries:
Cambodia, Cameroon, Burma, Iran, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Guatemala.
General Lemnitzer originally proposed that the Special Group (CI) add those countries to
the list back on February 8, 1962.148

148

President Kennedy to Special Group (CI), memorandum, NSAM 124 Annex, 18 Jan. 1962,
Annex to National Security Action memorandum No. 124, RG 330 Records of the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 56,
FN 370.64 Jan.-July, 1962, 1; George W. Ball (Undersecretary of State) to the President, memorandum, 10
Oct. 1962, Plan of Action for Indonesia, 1-3; idem, Plan of Action for Indonesia, Enclosures 1-3; idem,
Plan of Action for Indonesia, Enclosures 9 and 11; idem, Plan of Action for Indonesia, Enclosure 7, 1;

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Periodic threats to established military regimes did involve the Special Groups
attention. In September 1962, the Special Group did receive a briefing from the Director
of the Central American Office, Katherine Bracken, who told the members of the Group
how Nicaraguan exile groups use Honduras and Costa Rica for safe havens and staging
areas for their periodic efforts to dislodge the Somoza family. Mrs. Bracken also
referred to a State request for American patrols of the Nicaraguan coast along its borders
in an effort to stymie the flow of arms into the country. McGeorge Bundy promised to
review the status of this proposal, but the Group decided it needed to take no action at
that time. When the Special Group decided to intercede, they brought the full range of
U.S. government agencies and departments to bear, putting into play the mechanisms
they, and the Kennedy administration, had worked to establish in the preceding months.
Events in fall 1962 in Guatemala called for a delicate balancing act.

In what

Undersecretary of State George Ball hailed as one of the most carefully prepared and
reviewed of all the Internal Defense Plans, the Special Group sought to promote a
greater understanding by Guatemalans of the objectives of the Alianza para el Progreso
while maintaining good relations with a nation that has followed a strong anti-

idem, Plan of Action for Indonesia, RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Executive Secretariat,
Records of the Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 1, FN Special Group (CI) 8/1/6210/31/62, Enclosure 12. NARA II; Maj. Gen. Maxwell Taylor (Chair, Special Group (CI)) to McGeorge
Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA), memorandum, 14 June 1962, Assignment of Additional Responsibility to the
Special Group (CI), NSF, NSAM, Box 336-7, FN NSAM 165, 1; McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to
Special Group (CI), memorandum, NSAM 165, 16 June 1962, Assignment of Additional Responsibility to
the Special Group (CI), NSF, NSAM, Box 336-7, FN NSAM 165, 1; and L. L. Lemnitzer (Chair, JCS) to
Special Group (CI), memorandum, JCSM 530-62, 30 Jan. 1962, Military Training Related to CounterInsurgency Matters (U), Attachment, 8 Feb. 1962, Training Objective to Combat Subversive
Insurgency, NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 124, 2. Kennedy Presidential Library.

209

Communist line since 1954. Unfortunately, the primary obstacle to that desired progress
was the Guatemalan military, the Central American nations primary and very effective
-- internal security force. But the Guatemalan Government and its army had been faced
since November 13, 1960 with a number of coup efforts which have involved defecting
military elements and guerrilla type activities. Counter-guerrilla instruction given to
Guatemalan officers by a United States mobile team had enhanced the ability of the
military to defend itself. Complicating matters further was the desire of the Guatemalan
Air Force for jet aircraft. The air force reckoned this would assist their internal security
mission as it would enable them to bomb the army and thereby maintain the
government. George Ball echoed the staff of the American Republics desk, as well as
the general sentiment of the Joint Chiefs, when he opposed this plan. Still, continued
political instability threatened to engage the rural populace and university students, where
Communist influence, albeit definitely limited, was growing. The Special Group (CI)
believed that the answer lay in the expansion and, it was hoped, professionalism of the
civil police authorities and a concerted civic action program by all internal security
forces. The Inter-American Police Academy, a prized child of the Special Group, was
deemed especially efficacious in this process. To assist the continued development of the
militarys counter-insurgency capabilities, the Internal Defense Plan called for training
Guatemalan officers 54 in the United States and 87 in the Canal Zone in such areas as
infantry officer training, cadet training . . . air-bourne operations, intelligence,

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psychological warfare, and communications and training in connection with Civic Action
Program.149
The Special Group (CI) strongly promoted civic action programs as the best
means to induce popular support of internal security forces and programs. The members
placed great store in the potentialities for the development of medical, public health, and
sanitation in particular. In early 1963, the Special Group sought, and received, status
reports on the health care programs then underway.

In Latin America, embassies

reported that many opportunities existed, but that little action had yet been taken. In
Argentina, military medical equipment . . . could be put to excellent use in the outlying
areas and in Costa Rica the paramilitary forces would be most useful in such a
program. Staff in Ecuador reported that current health and medical activities by police,
paramilitary and military units appear to be minimal. The assessment from Bolivia was
even more bleak. For practical purposes there are no substantial health and medical
activities by police, carabineros, and military units in Bolivia at present. Of course, the
embassy in Bolivia went on to point out that the army itself possessed only rudimentary

149

Thomas W. Davis (Executive Secretary), memorandum, 20 Sept. 1962, Minutes of Meeting of

Special Group (CI), RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Executive Secretariat, Records of the
Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 1, FN Special Group (CI) 8/1/62-10/31/62, 1;
Charles Maechling (U/S Office Sec. Spec. Group (CI)) to Special Group (CI), memorandum, 28 Nov. 1962,
Guatemala Country Internal Defense Plan, Attachment, Country Internal Defense Plan for Guatemala,
RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Executive Secretariat, Records of the Special Group (Counter
Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 1, FN Special Group (CI) 8/1/62-10/31/62, 1-30; George Ball (U/S) to Jeffery
C. Kitchen (G/PM), memorandum, 29 Nov. 1962, Agenda for Special Group (CI) Meeting, November 19,
1962, RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Executive Secretariat, Records of the Special Group
(Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 1, FN Special Group (CI) 8/1/62-10/31/62, 1; Maechling to Special
Group (CI), Guatemala, Attachment, Country Internal Defense Plan, 1; ibid., 7; Ball to Kitchen,
Special Group (CI) Meeting, November 19, 1962, 1; Maechling to Special Group (CI), Guatemala,
Attachment, Country Internal Defense Plan, 15-24. NARA II; ibid., 26; and ibid., 29.

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health care facilities and that soldiers received only cursory care at infrequent intervals.
While the embassy in Mexico denied the need for any MAP or AID assistance, staff in
Nicaragua feared any identification with the military establishment, even in such a
humanitarian program, was highly inadvisable until after the 1963 election. Still, the
Special Group (CI) continued to insist that public health and sanitation programs offered
an excellent, perhaps the best and most tangible, way internal security forces could foster
good will among the populace.150
Despite these successes, the Presidents brother, Attorney General Robert
Kennedy, found the U.S. militarys efforts to train its Latin American counterparts in
counterinsurgency to be lacking. As part of its continual process of assessment, the State
Department briefed the Special Group in early 1963 on the potential trouble spots in
Latin America. Edwin M. Martin, the assistant secretary of state for inter-American
affairs, described several countries as moving into a period of increasing tensions, as
they approach election periods, and diverse interests begin jockeying for power. The
Presidents Special Assistant, Ralph Dungan, noted the disturbing persistence in the
Military Assistance Program for the continuing large expenditure of funds for traditional
types of military assistance rather than for the desired emphasis on internal security. In

150

U. Alexis Johnson (U/POL) to Special Group (CI), memorandum, 16 July 1963, Medical
Civic Action Survey, RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Executive Secretariat, Records of the
Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 2, FN Special Group (CI) 1/17/63-3/7/63, 1; U.
Alexis Johnson (U/POL) to Special Group (CI), memorandum, 16 July 1963, Medical Civic Action
Survey, Attachment, Medical Activities by Security Forces, RG 59 Records of the Department of State,
Executive Secretariat, Records of the Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 2, FN Special
Group (CI) 1/17/63-3/7/63, 1-13; ibid., 1; and ibid., 2.

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other words, the Latin American military wanted toys, naval vessels, advanced
electronic equipment, and modern aircraft. For the attorney general, this trend could in
part be explained by the failure of military missions who were not giving sufficient
emphasis in Latin America to counterinsurgency training. Robert Kennedy told his
fellow Special Group members that, during his recent visit to Fort Gulick [January
1963], he was concerned to find that of the 435 Latin American students who have taken
courses, only 17 have taken the counterinsurgency course. He therefore instructed the
Defense Department representative on the Special Group (CI), General Krulak, to
review the situation and submit a report.151
It took the Joint Chiefs of Staff some time to satisfy the attorney general. It was
not until mid-June that General Taylor, now the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
agreed to submit a report at the June 17, 1963, meeting. It was not until June 28 that
the general offered his considered thoughts that the military facilities stood ready to
provide counter-insurgency training across the globe. The Joint Chiefs provided the
Special Group (CI) with a detailed memorandum that outlined U.S. military
counterinsurgency activities, including the location of the specific training facilities
listing which armed service branch provided the training. None of the facilities in the
Canal Zone rated a mention. General Taylor neatly sidestepped the attorney generals
criticism when he contended that there are no unfilled requests for foreign officers to

151

Thomas W. Davis (Exec. Sec. Spec. Group (CI)), memorandum, 4 Jan. 1963, Minutes of the
Meeting of the Special Group (CI), RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Executive Secretariat,
Records of the Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 2, FN Special Group (CI) 1/17/633/7/63, 1-2. NARA II.

213

receive counter-insurgency training in U.S. military schools. The attorney general then
requested a detailed report on the content of the military counterinsurgency courses.
The Group noted with interest the display of military counterinsurgency training
material that General Krulak provided on July 12 in partial fulfillment of Robert
Kennedys latest request. When the Defense Department in late August 1963 finally
produced the document requested at the beginning of the year, it once again stressed the
variety of operations it was conducting around the globe, including its intensive country
operations in Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Guatemala. When it
turned to the Canal Zone, the report lauded the cooperation given by the U.S. Army
Southern Command to the Inter-American Police Academy, that commands support of
army mobile training teams, and the stockpile of standard riot control equipment from
which the Commander in Chief of U.S. Army forces in Panama sent material to help
quell emergency situations [in] Ecuador and Bolivia. The U.S. Army School of the
Americas at Ft. Gulick remained conspicuously absent.152

152

James W. Dingeman (Exec. Sec. Spec. Group (CI)), memorandum, 17 June 1963, Minutes of
the Meeting of the Special Group (CI), RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Executive Secretariat,
Records of the Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 2, FN Special Group (CI) 6/20/63
8/1/63, 2-3. NARA II; Maj. Gen. A. J. Goodpaster (Spec. Asst. to Chair/JCS) to Special Group (CI),
memorandum, 25 June 1963, Summary of Military Counterinsurgency Progress Including Civic Action
Since 27 Dec. 1962 (U), RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Executive Secretariat, Records of the
Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 2, FN Special Group (CI) 6/20/63-8/1/63, 1-4; James
W. Dingeman (Exec Sec. Spec. Group (CI)), memorandum, 28 June 1963, Minutes of the Meeting of the
Special Group (CI), RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Executive Secretariat, Records of the
Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 2, FN Special Group (CI) 6/20/63-8/1/63, 3; Charles
Maechling (U/S Office Sec. Spec. Group (CI)) to U. Alexis Johnson (U/POL), memorandum, 11 July 1963,
Agenda for Special Group (Counter Insurgency) Meeting, July 11, 1963, RG 59 Records of the
Department of State, Executive Secretariat, Records of the Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 19621966, Box 2, FN Special Group (CI) 6/20/63-8/1/63, 4; George A. Carroll (ASD/Spec. Ops.) to Special
Group (CI), memorandum, 21 Aug. 1963, Department of Defense Report on Developments in
Counterinsurgency, Inclosure, Department of Defense Report on Developments in Counterinsurgency,

214

Latin America ultimately occupied only a small portion of the Special Groups
time and effort in 1963. The Special Group no longer viewed Latin America with the
same urgency. Of course, the Group remained sensitive to changing circumstances, such
as when the Communist-led para-military FALN [Armed Forces of National
Liberations] in 1963 . . . staged limited but spectacular acts of sabotage and terrorism
against a wide range of targets, demonstrating an increasing degree of sophistication,
discipline and boldness. The Special Group set up weekly meetings in late September
1963 to coordinate the U.S. response to this seemingly well-organized insurgency in
Venezuela, and it renewed its interest in the original five countries picked by President
Kennedy for special attention: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Guatemala. But by
December, the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs reported to the Special Group that in
Guatemala and Ecuador the would-be instigators of terrorism appear to be weak
. . . and the military regimes in these countries are ready to take repressive action. The
report added that the civilian governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Colombia have
broadly-based support, and opposition has generally been limited to activities that can be
controlled by the security forces. Any threat of terrorism, the Bureau argued, is
present in Latin America on a significant scale only in Venezuela. To that the Bureau
reported with confidence that the Betancourt government is successfully keeping urban
terrorism and rural insurgency within manageable limits while improving its internal
security capabilities. Despite the manifest support of the Cuban Government for the

RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Executive Secretariat, Records of the Special Group (Counter
Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 2, FN Special Group (CI) 8/8/63-10/31/63, 4-5. NARA II.

215

FALN, a three-ton arms cache [was] discovered on a northern beach was found to be of
Cuban origin, Venezuela benefited from U.S. AID and MAP assistance, and from the
182 Venezuelan officers who had trained at the U.S. Army School, Canal Zone since
January 1961. By August 1963, only Honduras remained on the list of countries for
which a quarterly internal defense report was required, since the Special Group had
implemented Internal Defense Plans for the other five Latin American nations
Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.153
CONCLUSION
President John F. Kennedy assumed office convinced that the United States
needed to fundamentally alter its defense posture. Massive retaliation had to give way
to flexible response in order to contain the growing Soviet threat to the third world.
Rising expectations left the peoples of the so-called underdeveloped nations ripe for
Communist subversion, and the United States, Kennedy believed, needed to enhance
greatly its ability to counter this new gambit of international Communism. Cuba proved

153

Martin (ARA) to Special Group (CI), memorandum, 18 Sept. 1963, FALN Attacks Against
Official U.S. Installations and Personnel in Venezuela, Enclosure, FALN Attacks Against Official U.S.
Installations and Personnel in Venezuela, RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Executive
Secretariat, Records of the Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 2, FN Special Group (CI)
8/8/63-10/31/63, 1; Charles Maeschling (Sec. Spec. Group (CI)) to Averell Harriman (Chair, Special Group
(CI)), memorandum, 19 Dec. 1963, Agenda for Special Group (Counter-Insurgency) Meeting, RG 59
Records of the Department of State, Executive Secretariat, Records of the Special Group (Counter
Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 2, FN Special Group (CI) 10/17-12/19/63, 1; Sterling J. Cotrell (ARA) to
Special Group (CI), memorandum, 17 Dec. 1963, Terrorism in the Latin American Countries on the
Critical Insurgency List, 1; Cotrell to Special Group (CI), Terrorism in the Latin American Countries,
Attachment, Country Paper: Terrorism in Venezuela, RG 59 Records of the Department of State,
Executive Secretariat, Records of the Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 3, FN Special
Group (CI) 10/17-12/19/63, 3; ibid., 2; ibid., 5; and James W. Dingman (Exec. Sec., Spec. Group (CI)),
memorandum, 12 Aug. 1963, Minutes of the Meeting of the Special Group (CI), RG 59 Records of the

216

the necessity of this.

The foundation of regional strategy under the Eisenhower

administration hemispheric defense had failed to keep the Communists from

establishing a beachhead in the Western Hemisphere.

But the threat of the Cuban

Revolution lay not in its success but in Castros potential to foment insurrection
throughout the region. And, in no small way, Castro represented a personal challenge to
the hemispheric authority of the new president. In response, Kennedy sought to create
the institutional infrastructure he deemed necessary to confront Soviet expansion. The
Alliance for Progress would, he hoped, stimulate economic development in the region
while counterinsurgency training would provide the internal security needed to protect
the nascent economies during this liminal period. Bureaucratic impediments, however,
frustrated the young president.

Kennedy struggled to swiftly implement his new

programs and found himself repeating his instructions year after year. The Joint Chiefs
agreed with the need for a systemic overhaul and embarked on a thorough reorientation
toward rapid deployment and response, with counterinsurgency the preferred
preventative. The U.S. armed services, however, seemed bent on developing its new
capabilities on its own schedule. As 1961 gave way to 1962, the initial urgency with
which the Kennedy administration viewed the Cuban threat shifted to Moscow, Berlin,
and Laos. By the fall of 1962, the Cuban threat took on a far greater dimension.
Kennedy did not give up much in consenting to stay an invasion of Cuba
following the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. The compromise included the

Department of State, Executive Secretariat, Records of the Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 19621966, Box 2, FN Special Group (CI) 8/8/63-10/31/63, 2. NARA II.

217

decommissioning of outdated American nuclear missiles poised to strike the Soviet

Union from launch pads in northeastern Turkey. The events of that October proved that
the Soviet Union was the true enemy of the United States, and the Special Group (CI) had
determined that despite the example set by Castro, his ability to project his revolution
outside of Cuba had proved limited. The Defense Department had no illusions about the
inconsistent and often woefully inadequate training and material present in many Latin
American nations, especially in Central America and in the Caribbean, but they believed
that training by the United States could quickly set right the less-equipped of the regions
militaries. The Kennedy administration gradually accepted that the Latin American
military could provide the front line defense against Communist subversion in the region
with proper supervision and education.

The strategy fit with the formula of

modernization, followed the recommendation of Defense Department staffers, and

allowed Kennedy and his administration to focus on the growing threat in Southeast Asia.
The heavy burden of nation building had spread rapidly beyond the Western Hemisphere.
With the instruments at hand the Peace Corps, the Agency for International
Development, and the Special Forces Kennedy now could see to the security of the
region, by providing the regions most reliable institution the military with the tools it
needed to protect their peoples nations while encountering force-fed development.
John F. Kennedy also perpetuated the historic paternalism of the United States
toward Latin America. He entered the White House on a wave of optimism and high
ambition.

He surrounded himself with bright, exceptionally well-educated men

characterized by their relative youth and a brazen confidence. These men found in the
218

remarkable example of the United States the strength for an unshakable conviction that
American know-how could identify, analyze, and solve the complex problems the United
States faced which, in their minds, the preceding administration had blithely ignored. Yet
the reductionist nature of that belief, and the perceptions that fostered it, came about as a
result of the traditional manner in which the United States treated non-white peoples.
Policymakers in the United States drew upon race ideology when they consistently
characterized political opposition to Latin American governments as solely the work of
Cuban subversion, itself merely an extension of aggressive, expansive, world
Communism, i.e. externally driven, supplied, and orchestrated. Kennedy and his staff,
with rare exception, sought to eliminate the legitimacy of political opposition in Latin
America in much the same manner as segregationists in the South did when they verbally
attacked civil rights workers of the same period as outside agitators.154
The president, Rostow, et al., applied the same logic to social protest in Latin
America.

They were not ignorant of the inequities of life in the region and the

disproportionate power wielded by Latin American elites that nurtured those inequalities.
They had relied on those very elites for some time, and would continue to do so in the
battle against world Communism. But it was resistance to those elites that comprised the
impetus and animus of a host of insurgent movements in the 1960s and beyond.
Communism may have been the language of many revolutionary movements and their
erstwhile leaders, but not all of them.

Moreover, the dizzying manner in which

154

Eqbal Ahmad, The Roots of Misconceptions, in No More Vietnams? The War and the Future
of American Foreign Policy, ed. Richard M. Pfeffer (New York: Harper/Colophon, 1968), 17.

219

Communism, Marxism, Leninism, Socialism, and even democracy splintered across

Latin America demonstrated that the motivations of the people who joined movements,
lauded in quiet or public were as variegated as the individuals themselves. And only a
desperate few actually took up arms. But to U.S. policymakers, those human beings were
leftist insurgents, Communist rebels, or Marxist guerrillas, willing victims of a
malignancy, and pawns to world Communism.

220

Chapter 4:
Whats in a Name?
The U.S. Army School of the Americas, 1959-1963
Walt W. Rostow warned the first graduating class of the Special Warfare School
on June 28, 1961, that it does not take much imagination to understand why President
Kennedy has taken the problem of guerrilla warfare seriously. The facility at Ft. Bragg,
North Carolina would become the clearinghouse for counterinsurgency training tactics in
President Kennedys battle against Communist guerilla action around the globe. In his
remarks to the soldiers, Rostow, the new chief of the Department of States Policy
Planning Staff, intoned that the new administration faced four major crises: Cuba, the
Congo, Laos, and Viet-Nam. Each, Rostow warned the graduates, represented a
successful Communist breaching . . . of the Cold War truce lines that had evolved after
World War II. Recent Communist aggression had proven especially dangerous to the
Western Hemisphere.

The Cuban Revolution, he went on, had been tragically

captured from within by the Communist apparatus. For Rostow, that meant that Latin
America faces the danger of Cubas being used as the base for training, supply, and
direction of guerrilla warfare in the Hemisphere. The prospect of Cuban-sponsored
subversion loomed large in the region, given Rostows fear of the destabilizing impact of
the revolution of modernization. While the Communists worked to subvert this process
and impose Communist dictatorships as they had with Cuba, Rostow argued that the
American purpose and the American strategy instead sought to promote increasing
221

degrees of human freedom in which truly independent nations would be permitted to

fashion, out of its own culture and its own ambitions, the kind of modern society it
wants.

Our central task in the underdeveloped areas, Rostow admonished the

graduates, is to protect the independence of the revolutionary process now going

forward.155
John F. Kennedy called Latin America the most dangerous area in the world.
The Cuban Revolution reflected a worldwide rise in dissident insurgencies that
represented a new assault by Moscow on the free world, which now threatened the
United States in the Western Hemisphere.

The events of 1959 led to incremental

adjustments to the mechanics of hemispheric defense. Kennedy came to office in 1961

convinced that the defense posture of the United States required a complete overhaul to
meet this new threat. And when Fidel Castro declared on May 1, 1961, that Cuba was a
socialist state and he would not hold any elections, it became obvious that his barely
tolerated forays into the Caribbean had to be stopped. Rampant poverty, deeply rooted
antagonisms, and a revolution of rising expectations threatened to tear apart the
underdeveloped world.156

155

Walt W. Rostow to U.S. Army Special Warfare School, address, 28 June 1961, Guerrilla
Warfare in Underdeveloped Areas, RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Records of the
Policy Planning Staff, 1957-1961, Box 121, FN Internal Defense Counter Guerrilla, 1. NARA II; ibid., 2;
and ibid., 3.
156

See Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area of the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts
Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); and
Edwin Lieuwen, Arms and Politics in Latin America, rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1961), 286.

222

Walt Rostow had supreme confidence in the ability of United States expertise to
control the modernization process. Further, he staked America to the likelihood that
modernization would produce capitalist democracies.

Like his president, he feared

Communist subversion like the plague. Internal security training held the cure. Thus, to
the United States fell a thankless task. I do not need to tell you, Rostow intoned, that
the primary responsibility for dealing with guerrilla warfare in the underdeveloped areas
cannot be America. Instead, the United States must arm the men who would battle
Communist subversion by providing them with the skills necessary to keep their nations
free. Training Latin American military students, who could then go home and train their
comrades, was what the good doctor from MIT prescribed.

He concluded to the

graduates that, like doctors inoculating a population against a dread contagion, the United
States must counter the systematic attempt by Communists to impose a serious disease
on those societies attempting the transition to modernization. Latin America would
have to provide its own internal security in this ongoing battle, with U.S. direction and
training, of course.157
The army initially viewed the USARCARIB School at Ft. Gulick as the best
available resource to reorient the Latin American military to internal security. For two
decades the United States had used the Panama Canal Zone to train members of the Latin
American military, first during World War II and then as part of a hemispheric defense
posture. While Latin America pushed the USARCARIB School to increase its offerings

157

Rostow to U.S. Army Special Warfare School, Guerrilla Warfare in Underdeveloped Areas,
1. NARA II.

223

and raise the sophistication of its courses, the school had operated in obscurity within the
training regimen of the U.S. Army. The school had to negotiate any changes carefully
within established doctrine. Now, the language skills possessed by its instructors seemed
to provide the quickest route to instilling in the Latin American military the tenets of
United States counterinsurgency training.
But the Kennedy administration never embraced the U.S. Army training center in
Panama. When Kennedy renamed the facility at Ft. Gulick the U.S. Army School of the
Americas in July 1963, the change came as part of a promotional campaign to show that
the United States military had embraced a truly hemispheric perspective. The school had
quickly become a minor footnote in a systemic shift to counterinsurgency training.
Instead, President Kennedy preferred the poster children of his new policy: special
forces. Not only did the new special forces units represent a mobile, surgical strike
capability to meet the new challenge posed by international Communism in the guise of
wars of national liberation, these new cadres would provide the requisite training to the
military of the underdeveloped world. And by the end of the young presidents tenure,
the region no longer held the presidents interest, nor did Latin America represent the
threat it had initially seemed to pose.158

158

JCS, General Order No. 8, 1 July 1963, Redesignation of Unit, in Col. Harry D. Temple
(USARSO) to Commandant, USARSA, letter, 13 Sep. 1963, Distinctive Insignia Request, File 228.01,
HRC 352 Schools -- U.S. Army School of the Americas, 1-2. CMH.

224

INTERNAL SECURITY
Military men shaped U.S.-Latin American relations during the cold war. By the
time Harry Truman signed the military assistance pact into law, the United States had
superceded Europe as the primary source of military expertise in the hemisphere.
Policymakers for successive U.S. administrations correctly identified the military of Latin
America as the most important power brokers in their society and concentrated on them
accordingly. But this developing relationship was fraught with antagonism. At best, the
United States doled out material aid according to schedules set in Washington, D.C.
Even in Brazil, where the United States forged the closest relationship with any military
in Latin America, U.S. military officers abruptly informed Brazilian military leaders in
April 1957 that they could not enter the Nike missile bases constructed on their territory.
Instead, they could serve as weather observers, security guards, or housekeepers. As
prestigious and powerful often preeminent leaders of sovereign nations, Latin
American military keenly resented their secondary status. The military of Latin America
likened themselves to the noble military orders of the distant past, honor bound to defend
their homeland and above the fray of pedestrian political affairs. Confronted with what
they perceived as a pervasive venality that ran rampant in national and regional politics,
the Latin American military by the eve of the Cuban Revolution had led for decades with
the entrenched conviction that only they were fit to protect the fatherland. Periodically,
corrupt politics and inept politicians compelled the military to intervene on behalf of the
nation. Or, as Argentinas General Arturo Rawson explained his countrys second coup
of 1943, When the nation, as a result of bad rulers, is put into a situation where there are
225

no constitutional solutions, [the military] has a duty to fulfill: to put the nation in order.
And they must have had a lot of bad rulers, because the Latin American military
launched no fewer than ninety-seven coups between 1930 and 1961. But the United
States cared more about Communism than democracy during the cold war. And while
critics of internal security assistance for Latin American military persistently decried the
use of such training for domestic political repression, the Kennedy administration
believed that only with U.S. military training could Latin America forestall further
Communist subversion in the hemisphere.159
Internal security was precisely the type of training that Latin America wanted.
Brazilians had already touted the training offered by the U.S. Army Caribbean School. In
May 1959, the American consul in So Paulo sent a dispatch to Washington in which he
cited an article in a local So Paulo paper that described a new course being offered at the

159

See John Child, Unequal Alliance: The Inter-American Military System, 1938-1978 (Boulder:
Westview, 1980), 27-46; and Lieuwen, Arms and Politics, 187-95 for U.S. military training up through
World War II. Brian Loveman, For La Patria: Politics and the Armed Forces in Latin America
(Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1999), 149-55; and Child, Unequal Alliance, 119-29 discuss the
emerging cold war U.S. policy toward the Latin American military. Sonny B. Davis, Brotherhood of Arms:
Brazil-U.S. Military Relations, 1945-1977 (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1996), 154.
Loveman, La Patria, 101-38; Lieuwen, Arms and Politics, 24-8; and John J. Johnson, The Military and
Society in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), 93-133, trace the development of the
institutional fervor of the Latin American military. For the catalytic role of the Cuban Revolution, see
Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies, Jr., eds., The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military in Latin
America, 2d rev. ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 89-93, 163-5, and see The Military
Speaks for Itself, in Loveman and Davies, eds., Politics of Antipolitics, 193-306, for a thorough sampling
of the collective anti-political mindset. For more details see Lieuwen, Arms and Politics, 36-58, and
Johnson, Military and Society, 134-52. Loveman, La Patria, 101, quotes General Arturo Rawson; Willard
Barber and C. Neale Ronning, Internal Security and Military Power: Counterinsurgency and Civic Action
in Latin America (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1966), Appendix A, Illegal and
Unscheduled Changes of Heads of State, Part I, By Country, [1-15]; and See David F. Schmitz, Thank
God Theyre on Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1999), for a global look at the predilection for authoritarian
dictatorships.

226

local Police Force Training School by officers who had graduated from Fort Gulick, site
of the USARCARIB School. The article lauded the efforts of the Commandant of the
Forca Pblica, a paramilitary group stationed in So Paulo, who established a
specialized course under the direction of the officers who studied at the USARCARIB
School to establish a shock squad. The paper described this shock squad as one
equipped to handle all abnormal situations, such as a public disturbance. In the
event of a public disturbance, the article stated with pride, the military intelligence
service will inform the High Command of the Forca Pblica, which in turn will
dispatch a detachment . . . outfitted with the most modern equipment: carbines with
bayonets, gas masks, moral effect and chemical grenades. The United States consulate
in So Paulo wrote that this information will be of interest to the Department and other
Washington agencies as evidence of the effectiveness of technical assistance and training
offers extended by the American Government to military and police organizations in
Brazil. The open reality was that Latin Americans utilized the training given by the U.S.
military for domestic purposes.

No mission held greater prominence for the Latin

American military than the preservation of the nation state from the ravages of
Communism. And they wanted the best the United States had to offer.160
The USARCARIB School in 1959, however, still had to operate from its fringe
position in the U.S. hemispheric defense posture. The school continued to fall under the

160

Richard P. Butrick (So Paulo) to Department of State, dispatch, #570, 11 May 1959, Forca
Pblica Training School, Enclosure 2, Translation of an Article Appearing in a Gazeta, May 6, 1959,
RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Central Decimal Files, 1955-1959, Box 2950, FN
711C.11/12-1456, 1-2. NARA II. And see note 4 above.

227

rubric of the U.S. Caribbean Command, whose duties included the principal U.S.
military representative in military/political negotiations and dealings between the U.S.
and Latin American countries.161 The mission of the USARCARIB School was limited
to:
a. support U.S. Army Missions, Attaches, MAAGs, and Commissions
operating in Latin America by instructing Latin American Military and
para-military personnel in U.S. military technical skills, leadership
techniques, and doctrine covering military actions during peace and war;
b. augment the efforts of other U.S. agencies in fostering friendly relations
with Latin American nations;
c. instill in Latin American personnel a further appreciation of the ideals of
democracy and the American way of life; and
d. translate selected training publications from English into Spanish.162
Students concentrated in courses in the schools three major departments: Tactics,
Armament and Automotive, and Technical. But, in April 1959, Walter H. Dustmann,
from the U.S. embassy in Panama, celebrated a first in hemispheric military
cooperation when students at the USARCARIB School participated in the firing of 105
mm howitzers with U.S. Army troops. The course of instruction at the school and the
test firing followed the dictates of the training offered at the Artillery School, Ft. Sill,
Oklahoma. Prior to this joint exercise, students took this type of training only with the

161

Hugh Gardner, USARSO, Mission of Southern Command, 1959-1966, HMF 2-021, 1.

CMH.
162

J. F. Monahan to (Col. Schroeder) Commandant, letter, 15 Jan. 1963, Operational Analysis

Report, USARCARIB School, RG 498 U.S. Army Caribbean School [School of the Americas], Box 1,
File No. 201-46, Operations Planning Files, CY 1962. NARA II.

228

schools Armament section. In this historic first were Latin American students from
nine Central and South American countries.163
The Eisenhower administration adjusted its attitude about intelligence training
after Castros successful revolution in Cuba. Although the president rejected intelligence
training for Latin American military at the USARCARIB School in 1956, continued
demand for training from Latin America, particularly Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and
Guatemala, combined with the perceived growing Communist attention to Latin
America, led the army to push for greater latitude to impart specialized training. In
January 1959, the United States Intelligence Board began to debate the utility of
establishing a counterintelligence school in Panama because the Army had received
many indications of interest on the part of various Latin American armed forces officers
in training in counterintelligence and countersubversive methods. Administratively, the
State Department wanted the Operations Control Board to coordinate any such training
program on a case-by-case basis.

Eisenhower resisted the bureaucratic tendency to

proliferate, so he was reluctant to create any new entities, especially with the defense
establishment.

Permanent training at the USARCARIB School would permit

administrative coordination of counterintelligence training. The Department of State and

Defense would identify nations in need of such training; military missions could then
participate in the selection of specific students to be sent to Ft. Gulick. In May 1960,

163

Walter H. Dustmann (First Sec., Panama Embassy) to Department of State, dispatch, #543, 16
Apr. 1959, Army Caribbean LA Students in Hemispheric First, RG 59 General Records of the
Department of State, Central Decimal Files, 1955-1959, Box 2950, FN 711C.11/12-1456, 1. NARA II.

229

President Eisenhower authorized the establishment of a special school for intelligence

and anti-subversion orientation in Panama. Instead of a separate facility, the army
eventually instituted intelligence training as a regular part of the curriculum at the
USARCARIB School in October 1960. The counterintelligence training at the school
and the establishment of the Foreign Area Specialist training program for Latin America
did represent a small shift in the practice of hemispheric defense and came as a result of
the Cuban Revolution.164
Nevertheless, the mechanics of United States defense posture under Eisenhower
still limited Latin Americas role in the cold war to hemispheric defense with only the
appearance of a collaborative effort. The Inter-American Army Conference 1960 sought
to promote Inter-American friendships on both a personal and country-to-country-basis
by providing conferees unclassified information on international Communisms

164

Snow (ARA) to Arneson (INR), memorandum, 27 Feb. 1959, Counterintelligence School for
Latin American Armed Forces Officers, RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Bureau of
Inter-American Affairs, Records of the Special Assistant on Communism, 1958-1962, Box 2, FN
Intelligence 1959, 1; Department of State to Bogot, et al., instruction, #CA-10336, 28 May 1959,
Department of the Army Foreign Area Specialist Training Program for Latin America, Enclosure,
Richard Collins (Dir., Plans, Prog., and Sec., OUSACOS) to Chief, Mil. Liaison, DOS, memorandum, 4
May 1959, Department of the Army Foreign Area Specialist Training Program for Latin America, RG 59
General Records of the Department of State, Central Decimal File, 1955-1959, Box 3068, FN 710.5/32759, 1; Hugh S. Cumming (INR) to Murphy, letter, 20 Jan. 1960, Counterintelligence School for Latin
American Armed Forces Officers, RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Bureau of InterAmerican Affairs, Records of the Special Assistant on Communism, 1958-1962, Box 2, FN Intelligence
1959, 1; Snow to Arneson, Counterintelligence School, 1; Herb Higgins (MSC) to John O. Bell
(U/MSC), memorandum, 16 May 1960, Interim Spot Report, RG 59 General Records of the Department
of State, Office of the Deputy Director of Program and Planning (Special Assistant for Mutual Security
Coordination), Office Files of John O. Bell, 1957-1961, Box 17, FN JMW Latin America, 1-3; and Elvis
Stahr (Sec. of the Army) to Robert McNamara (Sec. of Def.), memorandum, JCSM 173-60, 27 April 1961,
Plan to Step Up Latin American Attendance in Counter-Guerrilla Training Activities, Inclusion 4 Plan
to Step Up Latin American Attendance in Counter-Guerrilla Training Activities, in Annex B
Intelligence, RG 407 Records of the Adjutant Generals Office, 1917-, Classified Central General
Admin. Files, 1955-1962, 1961 Cases, Box 436, FN AG 353, 1-6-61, 1. NARA II.

230

objectives in the Western Hemisphere along with the available intelligence training
under MAP and OISP. The year 1959 did lead to subtle adjustments in practice but not
policy. For example, the responsibilities of the Caribbean Command did increase to
include Mexico in 1960. The Inter-American Army Conference 1960 sought to promote
Inter-American friendships on both a personal and country-to-country-basis by
providing conferees unclassified information on international Communisms
objectives in the Western Hemisphere along with the available intelligence training
under MAP and OISP. And while momentum for the creation of the Inter-American
Defense College grew in 1959, the proposed institution still fell clearly within the
parameters of established policy.

The new College would have the mission of

conducting a course of study on the Inter-American system and the military, economic,
political and social factors that constitute the essential components of inter-American
defense, enabling Latin American attendees the opportunity to be exposed to our
national environment and acquire a better understanding of our institutions and way of
life. And, of course, the IADC would help to increase [Latin American armed forces]
understanding of, and orientation toward, U.S. objectives and policies, and to promote
democratic concepts and foster pro-American sentiments among Latin American military
personnel. Still, it would take three more years before the United States funded the
original Inter-American Defense College, first located at Ft. McNair in Washington,
D.C., and later at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. But it was left to a Panama City newspaper
to praise the Latin American representatives graduated in June 1959 by the USARCARIB
School as further proof of the bonds forged by the school, heralding that There is no
231

nation in our Americas that has not shed the blood of its people for that greatest boon of
all: freedom . . . we of these 21 free nations must ever stand together against any foreign
foe.165
WHERE POLICY MEETS CURRICULA
Little changed in the actual practice of American military policy toward Latin
America in the opening months of 1961. Despite the new young presidents public
rhetoric about the importance of Latin America to regional security, United States
military representatives found a cool reception from Latin American military attendees at
the March 1961 Operation Solidarity conference at Ft. Amador, Panama. Latin American
representatives wanted more aid, requested U.S. officers who could speak Spanish, and
found that the years meeting offered nothing new. Regarding Castro, the Latin
American response varied. Argentina visibly avoided the subject and noted only that
such a revolution could not happen in Argentina, while General Gomar of Mexico

165

Maj. Gen. Daniel A. OConner (COSCARIBCOM), memorandum, 19 July 1960, InterAmerican Army Conference, RG 218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Central Decimal File,
1960, Box 73, FN CCS 9122-5410 Central America (19 July 1960), 1. NARA II; Hugh Gardner, USARSO,
Mission of Southern Command, 1959-1966, HMF 2-021, 1. CMH; OConner (COSCARIBCOM),
Inter-American Army Conference, 1; Christian A. Herter (Acting Sec. of State) to American Republics,
circular telegram, #G-11, 6 July 1959, RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Central Decimal
File, 1955-1959, Box 3068, FN 710.5/3-2759, 1; R. R. Rubottom (A/ARA) to Robert K. Knight (Dep.
ASD/ISA), letter, 6 Nov. 1959, RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Central Decimal File,
1955-1959, Box 3068, FN 710.5/3-2759, 1; J-5 to JCS, note, 2 Apr. 1959, An Inter-American Defense
College, Enclosure E, Discussion, RG 218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Central Decimal
File, 1959, Box 128, FN CCS 9122-3520 Central America (14 Apr. 1959); W. A. Comer (Military
Assistance Comptroller) to Chief Military Assistance Division (Dept. of the Army), 25 Apr. 1962,
Furnishings for the IADC, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the
Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 49, FN 352 Apr-June, 1962, 1-3; and
in For All-American Defense, Star and Herald, in Walter H. Dustmann (First Sec., Panama Embassy) to
Department of State, dispatch, #676, 10 June 1959, Army Caribbean School Graduates 338 Latin
Americans, RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Central Decimal Files, 1955-1959, Box
2950, FN 711C.11/12-1456, 1. NARA II.

232

stated categorically that if those Cubans try to impress themselves on Mexico we will
kill them. The representatives from the Southern Cone generally dismissed Castro as a
threat only to illiterates.

Guatemala, on the other hand, welcomed U.S. military

intervention. Designed as a training exercise, Operation Solidarity reflected the type of

cooperative efforts that characterized the Eisenhower administration:

high-level

meetings and discussions with a modicum of fanfare, generally in less-than glamorous

settings, that offered Latin Americans few opportunities for any substantive input into
policy or material improvements of aid. The final report generated by the Caribbean
Command did include a country-by-country assessment of each Latin American states
combat readiness based on its ability to preserve internal security. Brazil and Mexico,
along with Chile, fared relatively well in the eyes of the U.S. military, but the Andean
nations posed a cause for concern and the islands of the Caribbean and Central America
represented serious potential targets for Communist infiltration.166
The Bay of Pigs debacle on April 17, 1961 forced the United States to accelerate,
rapidly, the drive to provide Latin America with the skills to defend themselves from
Cuban-Communist subversion. The National Security Council met on April 22, 1961, to
re-evaluate U.S. policy. In response to those discussions, Robert McNamara directed
the secretary of the army, Elvis Stahr, to provide, post haste, a plan . . . for stepping up

166

CGUSARCARIB (Ft. Amador) to DCSOPS (Washington), telegram (CARGB 40094), 8 Mar.

1961, Summary of Comments and Reaction Latin American Military Representatives to Operation
Solidarity, POF, Country File, Box 121A, FN Latin America, Security, 1961-1963, 1-3. Kennedy
Presidential Library; Operation Solidarity, 1-4 March 1961, Final Report, HRC 354.2 ManeuversOperation Solidarity, 1. For individual country reports, see Annexes A through S of Operation
Solidarity, 1-4 March 1961, Final Report, HRC 354.2 Maneuvers- Operation Solidarity, 1. CMH.

233

Latin American attendance in counter-guerrilla training activities, notably those at Fort

Bragg and Fort Gulick. The army concluded that the United States needed to expand
counterinsurgency training because most Latin American MAAGs and missions who
advise local governments do not have personnel qualified in counter-insurgency, counterintelligence, civic action, and psychological warfare. Even more alarming, Secretary
Stahrs report went on to say, few officials outside of the Latin American military
appreciate the threat of Communist subversion or for internal reasons ignore the
importance of counter-insurgency, civic action, intelligence/security, and psychological
operations. The Joint Chiefs of Staff quickly concurred and authorized the expansion of
counterintelligence training beyond the USARCARIB School to include the U.S. Army
Intelligence School, the Inter-American Defense Board, the Foreign Area Specialist
School, and all service schools and colleges that trained MAAGS, missions, and attachs.
The secretarys staff targeted Colombia, specifically, for training given the already
identified threat of subversion there. Ideally, expanded U.S. military training would
enable local governments throughout the region to gradually develop their own
capability for counter-guerrilla training. The prime mission of the facilities at Ft.
Bragg and Ft. Gulick, Secretary Stahr went on, were to develop cadres, capable of
conducting similar courses in their own countries.167

167

Robert McNamara (Sec. of Defense) to Elvis Stahr (Sec. of Army), memorandum, 22 Apr.
1961, 1; Stahr to McNamara, memorandum, Plan to Step Up Latin American Attendance in, Inclusion
#4, Plan to Step Up Latin American Attendance, 2; idem, Plan to Step Up Latin American Attendance
in Counter-Guerrilla Training Activities, Inclusion 4, to Plan to Step Up Latin American Attendance in
Counter-Guerrilla Training Activities, 3; Intelligence, Annex B in Plan to Step Up Latin American
Attendance in Counter-Guerrilla Training Activities, Inclusion 4, in idem, Plan to Step Up Latin

234

The Kennedy administration chose courses at the USARCARIB School and at Ft.
Bragg to spearhead the new assault on subversion in Latin America. A select group of
advisors likely members of the Special Group (CI) including General Maxwell
Taylor, Allan Dulles, and Robert Kennedy, met at the direction of the president on May
16, 1961 to review the capability, estimated effectiveness, and status of the regions
police and military to stem guerrilla incursions. The Joint Chiefs formally responded to
President Kennedy three days later with JCSM 341-61. The leaders of the nations armed
forces concluded that the United States faced a long-term problem developing Latin
Americas internal security capacity. General L. L. Lemnitzer, the new Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, questioned the state of readiness of Latin Americas internal
security capabilities. The general reported that the domestic security forces extant in
most Latin America countries could, when supported by their governments, satisfactorily
handle indigenous threats. Subversion, however, was another matter. Countries such as
Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico possessed well-established military institutions and
internal security apparatuses to quell even external subversion campaigns. But most of
the regions military suffered material and educational weaknesses. Further, Lemnitzer
contended, the existing U.S. military program for strengthening the internal security of

American Attendance in Counter-Guerrilla Training Activities, 1-2; idem, Plan to Step Up Latin
American Attendance in Counter-Guerrilla Training Activities, Inclusion #2, Counter-Insurgency
Training Requirement for Colombia, 1-2; idem, Plan to Step Up Latin American Attendance in CounterGuerrilla Training Activities, 1; and idem, Plan to Step Up Latin American Attendance in CounterGuerrilla Training Activities, Inclusion #4, Plan to Step Up Latin American Attendance in CounterGuerrilla Training Activities, RG 407 Records of the Adjutant Generals Office, 1917-, Classified Central
General Admin. Files, 1955-1962, 1961 Cases, Box 436, FN AG 353, 1-6-61, 1-2. NARA II.

235

Latin America is . . . beyond the present capability of most Latin American nations to
absorb. Consequently, the general recommended a two-pronged educational program:
one to increase awareness among the public, political leaders, and the armed forces of
Latin America that local Communism is totalitarian inter-national communism, and the
second to modernize the regions police and military with counterinsurgency training.
But, the general cautioned, this would of necessity be a development program. It would
take time.168
Properly trained police forces seemed to offer a useful mechanism to stem
Communist subversion in Latin America. The United States, the Joint Chiefs told the
president in their May report, had already established military police training in Puerto
Rico, the United States, and at the USARCARIB School, teaching Latin American cadres
such skills as border patrol, civil defense, riot control, industrial security, and security
investigations. Since 1956, the Joint Chiefs went on, the International Cooperation
Agency had trained police representatives from Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Peru and had recently recommended initiation of the
program in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rico, [sic] Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Proponents saw police as a quick fix. Establishing police forces might circumvent the

168

General L. L. Lemnitzer (Chair JCS) to President, memorandum, JCSM 341-61, 19 May 1961,
Training of Police and Armed Forces of Latin America (U), Appendix, Training of Police and Armed
Forces of Latin America (U), POF, CO, Box 121A, FN Latin America, Security, 1960-63, 1-2; General L.
L. Lemnitzer (Chair JCS) to President, memorandum, JCSM 341-61, 19 May 1961, Training of Police and
Armed Forces of Latin America (U), POF, CO, Box 121A, FN Latin America, Security, 1960-63, 1-2.
Kennedy Presidential Library.

236

Morse amendment as well as provide a viable method of internal security that could
quickly be inserted into Latin American politics.169
General Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs, however, rejected plans to form a
Parisian police in any Latin American country. The French police organization,
according to the general, enjoys a professionalism and institutional history independent of
specific regimes, whereas in Latin America, police forces are suspect and among the
first to be reorganized by the new administration. Plus, the Latin American military
would resist any institutional threat to their preeminent position on internal security. In
time, perhaps, training programs could develop effective, professional police forces,
with minimal overtones of political connivance, that could assist in maintaining
internal security. The Joint Chiefs offered military police training as a compromise and
advised President Kennedy that MAP money would pay for 344 spaces at a cost of
$253,440 for Riot Control training and 344 spaces at a cost of $199,180 for
Counterguerrilla Training at Fort Gulick.170
Not surprisingly, the Joint Chiefs recommended military-led counterinsurgency
training as the foremost tool to counter Cuban-Communist subversion. The Joint Chiefs
advised the president that the U.S. Army planned to launch its new training program on
July 31, 1961 at Ft. Gulick in the Canal Zone. Secretary of the Army Elvis Stahr initially
promoted the USARCARIB School at Ft. Gulick as the best first choice for

169

Lemnitzer to President, JCSM 341-61, Training, Appendix, Training of Police and Armed
Forces, 5. Kennedy Presidential Library.
170

Ibid., 4; ibid., 2.

237

counterinsurgency training, rather than Fort Bragg, because of its Spanish language
instruction. The first ten-week Counter-Resistance Course, as it initially was called,
began with forty students from eighteen Latin American countries and included
instruction in civic action, 87 hours; intelligence-counter-intelligence, 91 hours;
counterguerrilla tactics and techniques, 95 hours. The army had actually made the
announcement on April 5. The Associated Press reported that the army planned to
establish a special guerrilla and anti-guerrilla warfare school in the Panama Canal Zone
that summer for Latin American nations which ask [for] such training. The school
sought to enlist Latin American interest at the Second Annual United States-Latin
American Army Commanders Conference, held at the Caribbean Command Headquarters
at Ft. Amador, in early May 1961. At the meeting, Lt. Col. Felipe Vas, the new counterresistance section chief at the USARCARIB School, emphasized the importance of
teaching the theories and practices of Communist aggression developed by Soviet
Russia and Red China. Recent experience in Algeria, Laos, Viet Nam and Cuba
illustrated the increasing threat to the free world of subversion and guerrilla-type
operations. In an article that touted the new course as the key to U.S. efforts to Nip
New Castros, The Wall Street Journal in early August extolled the little-publicized
training program that was quietly indoctrinating key officers in the varied skills
required to crush Red insurgent movements. The Journal reported that instruction, in
keeping with the doctrines of development, stressed civic action. As one Guatemalan

238

Captain put it, we want to further these poor classes which constitute precisely the
seed-bed for Communist demagoguery that is trying to destroy us (the military).171
The USARCARIB School began providing counterinsurgency training to Latin
American military as far back as 1944.

During World War II, elements of the

Nicaraguan National Guard were the first to receive jungle warfare training in Panama
with the mobile team, and fifty officers from the Colombian War College also received
two week instruction with the Mobile force. Training at the USARCARIB School
began with a subtle yet important shift in the 1959-1960 school year. The number of
tactics and artillery courses had increased in 1960. For the first time in 1959, a majority
of the students who graduated from the USARCARIB School came from Latin America.
In the 1960 catalog, the school took pride in noting that just more than one-half (8324) of
the 16,343 total students trained in its history did not come from the United States. More
than ever, the school depended on its Latin American students, and Latin America
wanted internal security training.172

171

Ibid., 3; Elvis Stahr (Sec. of the Army) to Robert McNamara (Sec. of Def.), memorandum, 27
April 1961, Plan to Step Up Latin American Attendance in Counter-Guerrilla Training Activities, RG
407 Records of the Adjutant Generals Office, 1917-, Classified Central General Admin. Files, 1955-1962,
1961 Cases, Box 436, FN AG 353, 1-6-61, 1. NARA II; Lemnitzer to President, JCSM 341-61, Training,
Appendix, Training of Police and Armed Forces, 5. Kennedy Presidential Library; U.S. to Set Up
Guerrilla War School in C.Z., Star Herald, 6 Apr. 1961, p. 1 col. 6; Counter-Resistance Course Bared for
Army Officers, Star Herald, [nd] May 1961, p. 1, col. 4; Anti-Guerrilla Course Here Will Teach How
Reds Operate, Star Herald, [nd] May 1961, p. 1, col. 6; and Louis Kraar, U.S. Teaches Latins AntiGuerrilla Tactics to Nip New Castros, WSJ, [nd] Aug. 1961, p. 1, col. 8. Ramsay Papers, John B. Amos
Library.
172

Office of the Staff Secretary, Caribbean Defense Command, Training in the Caribbean Defense
Command, 1941-1946, 1948, HMF, 8-2.8 AC, 48-9; Historical Section, Panama Canal Department,
Training of Latin American Military Personnel in the Panama Canal Department, in Preliminary
Historical Study, Panama Canal Department Training, vol. 2, Department Schools, HMF 8-2.9 AM 57.

239

The USARCARIB School was in position to provide just that. The United States
had used its control of territory in the Canal Zone to train U.S. military for many years.
During World War II, British commandos brought their experience to Burma and south
Asia. Following the war, the United States continued to send troops, in particular squads
from U.S. Ranger battalions, to Ft. Sherman located across the river from Ft. Gulick. But
it was not until 1959 that the USARCARIB School led the first cadre of Latin American
students through the course at Ft. Sherman. Informally, instructors from the school took
a small detachment from the Panamanian National Guard, led by a young, up-and-coming
officer by the name of Manual Noriega, on a counter-guerilla course fashioned after the
instruction given at the Jungle Training Center to prospective U.S. Army Rangers.
During the summer of 1959, Panamanian National Guardsmen . . . trained in the
USARCARIB Jungle Warfare Training Center, quelled the riots in Panama. General
Lemnizter cited this incident in JCSM 341-61 as proof of the situational efficacy of
counterinsurgency training by the U.S. military.173
In tune with the changing times, the school incorporated internal security and
counterinsurgency training into its new course on military intelligence. The purpose of
this ten-week, 400-hour course in July 1960 was to train selected personnel from Latin
American military forces to perform military intelligence duties, with particular emphasis

CMH. See USARCARIB School, The USARCARIB School Catalog, 1959-1960 (USARCARIB School:
Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1959), xiv-xvii. John B. Amos Library; and ibid., v.
173

Lt. Col. Russell Ramsay, Ret., oral history, 18 March 1998, John B. Amos Library; Lemnitzer
to President, JCSM 341-61, Training, Appendix, Training of Police and Armed Forces, 1. Kennedy
Presidential Library.

240

on techniques of recognizing and combating Communism as it affects the Latin American

countries. Since there still existed precious little evidence of a threat of invasion by the
Soviet Union, China, or even Cuba, which at the time of the publication of the 1960-61
course catalog was not yet accepted as a pawn of the USSR, this course could only
apply to internal security, something Congress had specifically precluded U.S. personnel
from teaching. The specific course content made that clear. The class taught Latin
American students such mundane issues as operational files and records and report
writing principles, while it emphasized counterespionage, counter-measures against
sabotage, counter-subversion and combat operations. Students received instruction in
such investigative techniques as the use and employment of surveillance, raids and
searches, and special operations. It offered an intensive section on the threat of the
Soviet Union and International Communism, where students studied Communist
theory, Communist expansion, and current Soviet trends. By 1961, the military
intelligence course had expanded to become a class specifically and unabashedly targeted
to Latin American Intelligence and Counterintelligence Officers and concentrated on
the principles and procedures used in security, counterespionage, countersabotage, and
countersubversion.

Students learned the basic principles of countering the

Communist threat while they learned its method of operation.174

174

USARCARIB School, The USARCARIB School Catalog, 1960-1961 (USARCARIB School:

Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1960), 57-8; and USARCARIB School, The USARCARIB School Catalog, 1961-1962
(USARCARIB School: Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1961), 53. John B. Amos Library.

241

Instructors from Ft. Gulick applied their experience to the first counterinsurgency
course held at the Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina on January 27,
1961. Previously a Ranger instructor at Ft. Sherman, Lt. Russell Ramsay brought his
counterinsurgency training experience to Ft. Bragg. Lt. Ramsay led several groups of
military intelligence students in 1960 on the same Jungle Warfare Training route at Ft.
Sherman along which he had ushered the first group of Panamanian National Guardsmen
in 1959. Along with four members of the 7th Special Forces battalion stationed at Ft.
Gulick, Ramsay led the class of twenty-nine foreign officers. Officers from the Andes
led the group. Bolivia sent seven officers and Ecuador six. Only Argentina represented
the Southern Cone with three officers at the first class at Ft. Bragg, and Guatemala
dispatched five as the lone Central American entry. Four officers from NATO countries
made the trip to North Carolina two each from Norway and Turkey along with two
lieutenant colonels from Iran and one final student, a colonel from Indonesia, Achmad
Sukendro. The students, an evaluation of the course asserted, while of uneven quality,
consist on the whole of younger officers of capacity and promise. The United States
justified the training as necessary due to the growing threat of dissident movements,
which may be combined with irregular military operations . . . and that non-communist
governments and their armed forces do not possess an adequate defense capability in this
field at present. The army added the counterinsurgency course to the psychological

242

operations and unconventional warfare courses already in operation at the Special

Warfare Center.175
The U.S. Army in its classes at Ft. Bragg emphasized the importance of
ideologically driven psychological warfare. Consequently, instruction focused on the
nature and causes of resistance movements, communist efforts to exploit them, and
successful and unsuccessful efforts to counter them, to be presented where possible on a
historical and factual basis. Instructors at Ft. Bragg preferred to use Mao to provide
teaching points on the Sino-Soviet methods they would likely encounter. In their
encapsulation of Mao, U.S. Army officers stressed that guerrilla successes largely
depend upon powerful political leaders for whom military action is a method to attain a
political goal. Instructors at Ft. Bragg sought to instill in their students the necessity of
holding the initiative in this battle for political control. It is the side that holds the
initiative that has liberty of action, students were admonished. Regardless of the name
used revolution, rebellion, insurgency, guerilla warfare the primary entity to any
movement was the rebel: the rebel comes first; the rebellion second. Rebellions

175

Ramsay, oral history; HQ (SWC), Special Orders, No. 43, 10 March 1961, Ramsay Papers, 1.
John B. Amos Library; Wymberly DeR. Coerr to Harvey R. Wellman (U.S. Army Spec. Warfare School),
letter, 19 Feb. 1961, Enclosure, Counter-Guerrilla Operations Course, Fort Bragg, North Carolina:
Preliminary Observations, RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Bureau of Inter-American
Affairs, Office of Regional Political Affairs, Country and Subject Files, 1950-1963, Box 6, FN Defense
Affairs, DEF 6-9 Schools and Academies, Fort Bragg, 1; Harvey R. Wellman (ARA, Fort Bragg) to
Wymberley DeR. Coerr (ARA), comments, 28 Feb. 1961, Counter Guerilla Course, United States Army
Special Warfare School, Fort Bragg, North Carolina: Comments of State Department Representative, RG
59 General Records of the Department of State, Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, Office of Regional
Political Affairs (ARA/RPA), Country and Subject Files, Box 6, FN Defense Affairs DEF 6-9 Schools and
Academies Fort Bragg, 1; and DeR. Coerr to Wellman, Enclosure, Counter-Guerrilla Operations, 1.
NARA II.

243

depended on cadre morale and continued erosion of regime support, which is why the
U.S. Army stressed the importance of psychological warfare techniques . . . utilized to
sensitize the indifferent populations to counter the propaganda campaigns launched by
insurgents. Guerrillas themselves, the army contended, were highly susceptible [sic] to
propaganda and did not recognize that the cause simply masked a naked power grab.
Consequently, the army sought to anticipate and remove the causes of resistance
exploitable by communism.176
The army, not surprisingly, believed the instruction at Ft. Bragg to be worth
repeating. The United States pointed to the alarming rise in dissident movements
around the world that had been co-opted by international Communism. And in Algeria,
Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba, dissident movements had combined with irregular military
operations. Again and again, agents of the United States from the highest levels on
down would cite each of these instances as ample justification for continuing
counterinsurgency training, especially for non-communist governments and their armed
forces [which] do not possess an adequate defense capability in this field at present. To

176

Harvey R. Wellman (ARA, Fort Bragg) to Wymberley DeR. Coerr (ARA), Comments, 28 Feb.
1961, Counter Guerilla Course United States Army Special Warfare School, Fort Bragg North Carolina:
Comments of State Department Representative, Annex 1, Consideration for Counter Guerrilla
Operations, RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, Office
of Regional Political Affairs (ARA/RPA), Country and Subject Files, Box 6, FN Defense Affairs DEF 6-9
Schools and Academies Fort Bragg, 3. NARA II; Counter Guerrilla Operations Department, U.S. Army, Ft.
Bragg, North Carolina, CG 1100, Feb. 1961, Summary of Principles of Resistance Movements and
Guerrilla Operations, Ramsay Papers, 1. John B. Amos Library; ibid., 3; ibid., 4; ibid., 5; and Harvey R.
Wellman (ARA, Fort Bragg) to Wymberley DeR. Coerr (ARA), Comments, 28 Feb. 1961, Counter
Guerilla Course United States Army Special Warfare School, Fort Bragg North Carolina: Comments of
State Department Representative, Annex 2, Doctrine and Theory, RG 59 General Records of the
Department of State, Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, Office of Regional Political Affairs (ARA/RPA),
Country and Subject Files, Box 6, FN Defense Affairs DEF 6-9 Schools and Academies Fort Bragg, 4.
NARA II.

244

meet this growing need for internal security training, Gen. Lemnitzer informed the
president on May 19, 1963 in JCSM 341-61 that subsequent Counterguerrilla Operations
and Tactics Courses at Fort Bragg are being programmed for 100 students with a
proportionate increase in students from Latin America. In evaluating the first class at Ft.
Bragg, commanders at the Special Warfare Center concluded that since such a course
cannot be restricted to military considerations . . . An appreciation of non-military factors
is required.

In addition to identifying the strategy and tactics of international

Communism, the U.S. Army believed that counterinsurgency students needed to

understand the free world concept and rationale of evolutionary change. Perhaps most
important, instructors wanted domestic and foreign military students to appreciate the
contributions which the armed forces can make in facilitating government-sponsored
programs designed for meeting legitimate popular needs and aspirations. But the
Department of State representative at the first class at Ft. Bragg, Harvey Wellman, argued
that the United States should avoid starting as a hypothesis that the US . . . has been
invited into a country to engage in CG operations, since such a supposition may create
undesirable reactions among certain foreign students, especially from Latin American
countries devoted to the principle of non-intervention. Instead, the United States should
emphasize in its training the importance of students disseminating their instruction to
their own militaries. Wellman also attacked the armys insistence that foreign students
possess advanced English language skills. Instead, he argued that the principle criteria
for the selection of allied officers for training should be their capacity, duties and future
prospects and the countrys need, not their English comprehension. So revised, the
245

army launched its second counterinsurgency course on May 15, 1963 with double the
number of students, including 23 officers from Latin America (Argentina 3, Bolivia 8,
Ecuador 6, Guatemala 5 and Nicaragua 1), once again led by Lt. Ramsay.177
A SCHOOL FOR THE AMERICAS
The USARCARIB School took advantage of the White Houses unprecedented
interest in counterinsurgency to launch a major campaign to make itself the primary
institution for Latin American training. In early 1961 the new Commandant, Colonel
Edgar Schroeder, installed a branch at the school to reflect the new emphasis on
counterguerilla training. The new Department of Internal Security included sections
devoted to Counterinsurgency Operations, Military Intelligence, Military Police,
Research and Analysis, and Medical. In 1961, in recognition of the increasing
Communist threat in Latin America, those courses which were most directly related to
national internal defense capabilities were grouped into one department. By 1962, the
school declared in its catalog that Every course taught has definite application in the
counterinsurgency field. And the school assured that the new Department provides
instruction in every aspect of counterinsurgency operations, be it military, paramilitary,
political, sociological, or psychological. At the Inter-American Army Conference held
at Ft. Amador July 10-14, 1961, the Counter Resistance head at the USARCARIB
School, Lt. Col. Felipe Vas, informed the assembled generals that the new course

177

Counter Guerrilla Operations Department, Summary of Principles, Ramsay Papers, 3. John

B. Amos Library; Lemnitzer to President, Training, Appendix, Training of Police and Armed Forces,

246

devotes 60 hours to Civic Action, which instructed members of the Latin American
military in the importance of stimulation of economic growth by civic action.

The

colonel added that the Military Police Section will cover public relations, physical
security, and tactical and psychological factors necessary to quell a disturbance in the
early period without unnecessary bloodshed. The school added a shorter and smaller
Senior Officers course that concentrated on Communist tactics, propaganda techniques,
infiltration tactics, front groups and the role of civic action as an instrument for
fostering . . . active [civilian] participation and support of counter-resistance
operations.178
The USARCARIB School also sought to advertise its new offerings. As part of
its effort to extol the virtues of counterinsurgency training at Ft. Gulick, the school in late
1961 wrote a special internal security and counterinsurgency publication to highlight the
coming years courses. The school did so in a manner that fundamentally altered the
format and content of its course catalog. Ordinarily, the format of USARCARIB School
course catalogs did not vary. Annual course catalogs routinely began with a photo and

3. Kennedy Presidential Library; Counter Guerrilla Operations Department, Summary of Principles,

Ramsay Papers, 3; ibid., 5; ibid., 8; and Ramsay, oral history. John B. Amos Library.
178

USARCARIB School, The U.S. Army Caribbean School: One for All and All for One
(USARCARIB School: Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1962), 5. John B. Amos Library; Lt. Col. Felipe Vas, Counter
Resistance Training, in USARCARIB, Final Report: Inter-American Army Conference, 1961 (Ft.
Amador, C.Z.: USARCARIB, 1961), 87-91, RG 218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Central
Decimal File, 1961, Box 168, FN CCS 9125-5410 Central America (17 July 1961), 87. NARA II;
USARCARIB School, The U.S. Army Caribbean School: History and Operations (USARCARIB School:
Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1962), 5-6; Lt. Col. Felipe Vas, Counter Resistance Training, 90; and USARCARIB
School, The U.S. Army Caribbean School: History and Operations (USARCARIB School: Ft. Gulick, C.Z.,
1962), 5. John B. Amos Library.

247

biography of the current Commander of the U.S. Army Caribbean Command, followed
by a photo and biography of the Commandant of the school. Next, the catalog would
briefly list the mission and history of the school, routinely copying these from one year to
the next. Then the catalog would list the course offerings for the coming school year,
beginning July 1 of each calendar year, followed by a more detailed discussion of each
course and, finally, a brief discussion of the recreational facilities. In the 1962 effort,
however, the staff at Ft. Gulick presented a detailed history of instruction designed to
enhance its emerging mission and promote the school as the primary source of internal
security training for the Americas. The 1962-63 advisory also included a number of
photos which showed counterinsurgency students in action in the classroom and in the
field. One photo showed students completing a trestle bridge, and another depicted a
team engaged in bridge demolition exercises. Along with truck engine repair, judo,
and volleyball, the USARCARIB School offered photos highlighting an improvised
parachute made out of woven leaves designed for aerial resupply.

Apparently,

prospective students could hope that resupply did not include personnel. The school
ended its description by noting that though we have not mentioned every course in
detail, we want to reiterate that the entire school is dedicated to the counterinsurgency
effort. Indeed, the school clearly charted each of the coming years offerings from
cadet training to command and staff to engineering to communications to radio report to

248

small arms repair to heavy equipment to show that all applied to counterinsurgency and
internal security.179
The USARCARIB School offered two courses to satisfy the demand of Latin
American military eager for the latest in internal security operations from the United
States. In addition to the ten-week unit training courses, the school offered four, twoweek orientation courses for command grade officers each school year. In December,
1961, the second orientation course included two generals from Bolivia and another from
Mexico, a total of five colonels from Guatemala, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, and Mexico,
and seven majors, with representatives from Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, and
Venezuela. A captain from Brazil rounded out the class. The course was designed to
familiarize Field grade and General Officers with the nature and conduct of
counterinsurgency operations. In addition to reviewing some mutual problems, such
as intelligence gathering and tactical operations against dissident groups, the class
sought to familiarize these students with the capabilities and potential of graduates of
the regular course.

The ten-week course concentrated on the origins of

counterresistance doctrine, and the theoretical and practical application of military

intelligence and civic action, along with the array of tactical operations, for example
demolitions, heavy machinery, small arms, rifle repair, and marksmanship, consonant
with U.S. Special Forces training. The school spent considerable time studying various

179

USARCARIB School, The U.S. Army Caribbean School: One for All and All for One
(USARCARIB School: Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1962), 1-6. John B. Amos Library; ibid., 10-11; ibid., 12-6; and
ibid., 6.

249

historical insurgent movements, from Malaysia and Burma during World War II, to the
American campaigns in the Philippines, to contemporary movements in Laos, Vietnam,
Algeria, and, of course, Cuba.

Additionally, various instructors proffered weekly

discussions on such topics as the function of democratic government, Communism

versus democracy, and fallacies of Communism, along with instruction in public
relations, treatment of prisoners, and psychological warfare. In addition to the class
room, students in the ten-week counterinsurgency course participated in field exercises
each week and concluded the course with a two-week stint at the Jungle Warfare
School.180
The USARCARIB School also sought to present training at Ft. Gulick as
specifically designed to meet the needs of Latin American students.

U.S. military

personnel represented the bulk of the student body at the USARCARIB School up until
1959. The trend toward more and more Latin American students had been growing for
several years, and commandants of the school had already adjusted to the declining
interest of the U.S. Army by actively recruiting from the regions military. At the 1961
Generals Conference, the schools new head of counterresistance, Lt. Col. Vas, took the
opportunity to point out to the assembled officers that while a similar course is being
conducted in English at Fort Bragg . . . our course is tailored to meet the needs of the

180

Ibid., 8; USARCARIB School, Seccin de Operaciones de Contrainsurrecin: Curso de

Orientacin, #2, Ramsay Papers, 1-3; USARCARIB School, The U.S. Army Caribbean School Catalog,
1963 (USARCARIB School: Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1962), 24; and Tte Col. Aiden P. Shipley, Dir. de Instr., La
Escuela USARCARIB, Fuerte Gulick, Zona del Canal, Horario de Instruccin, Departamento de Seguridad
Interna, Curso: Contra Resistencia, Clase Num. 1, Semana 1-10, 31 Julio al 6 de Oct., Ramsay Papers, 120. John B. Amos Library.

250

American nations. Indeed, the school advertised its connection to Latin America with
the 1962-1963 course catalog. Since 1949, the USARCARIB School had made a point in
the brief history paragraph that helped to introduce the annual course catalog to include a
mention of the raw numbers of students who had passed through its doors. In doing so,
the school tried to distinguish the number of Latin American students. Prior to 1962,
however, such mentions came almost in passing. In 1962, the school added what would
become a staple feature to the course catalog:

a regional map.

The map showed

prospective students the number of servicemen from each Latin American country who
had attended training at the school. Not surprisingly, Argentina had sent the fewest
number of students of all the South American nations to the facility at Ft. Gulick up to
1961. Mexico and Brazil also had sent few personnel. Along with Mexico and Brazil,
Argentina had long had a developed professional military with established and
recognized military academies. Generally, students from these military preferred the
more prestigious training opportunities presented in the United States at the Command
and General Staff College, the Army and Naval War Colleges, and even West Point.
Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela, in that order, had sent the most students from South
America. The USARCARIB School drew most of its students from Central America,
primarily training Costa Ricas national police force (the 1948 constitution outlawed a
military), and the National Guards of Panama and Nicaragua. More than one-sixth of all
the Latin American students trained at the USARCARIB School came from Nicaragua.181

181

Vas, Counter Resistance Training, in Final Report, 87. NARA II; USARCARIB School,
One for All and All for One, 7. John B. Amos Library. See John Patrick Bells, Crisis in Costa Rica:

251

The USARCARIB Schools enrollment, however, did suffer from the vagaries of
military politics. To begin with, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Department of Defense
promoted foreign military training by MAAGs and the like.

For their part, Latin

American military preferred the more prestigious service schools in the United States.
And the U.S. armed services wanted foreign military who sought training outside their
home countries to take classes in the United States. As a result, the USARCARIB School
had to take care not to appear to compete with U.S. service schools. Language also
continued to be a recruiting problem. Repeatedly, senior military staff in the Pentagon
dismissed language as a problem. But State and Defense Department representatives in
Latin America had difficulty finding military who speak and understand English, and
those who could frequently do not have the educational or technical background to
comprehend U.S. military courses, let alone technical ones, taught in either language.
Beyond language skills, many of the Latin American students were barely literate. Even
in a country like Brazil, one ranking State Department official argued, which is more
highly developed than the so-called Indian countries, the recruit frequently hasnt been
exposed to modern plumbing facilities, simple hand tools, etc.

Since the 1950s,

advocates of military training for Latin American troops argued that U.S. instructors
provided not only literacy but also a priceless education on contemporary western life.
The army responded that they did not have to alter policy since Ft. Gulick existed for
students who could not speak English. The cost of sending students remained a persistent

Revolution in 1948 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971) for discussion of the 1948 constitution.

252

problem for Latin American militaries. The French and German military missions of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had borne the cost of Latin American
students, so Latin American military commanders expected the United States to pay as
well. After all, it was the United States who wanted Latin America to follow U.S.
doctrine. The Kennedy administration, like Eisenhowers, resisted paying the per diem
for Latin American students. The army used a loophole to avoid paying foreign military
who attended Ft. Gulick the per diem customarily provided to foreign military students
attending service colleges and schools in the United States because the USARCARIB
School was located in Panama. The best the army would do was agree to assess per diem
payment on a case-by-case basis in the future. Consequently, the school confronted a
number of factors out of its control that contributed to low enrollment.182
The attorney general rejected any explanations when he attacked the low turnout
at Ft. Gulick in early January 1961.

Robert Kennedy, his brother Edward, and

Undersecretary of Defense Joseph Califano traveled to Ft. Gulick on the attorney

generals Central American tour just after Christmas 1962. On his return to Washington,
D.C., the presidents brother reported to the Special Group (CI) that only 17 of 435
foreign military trained in counterinsurgency by the United States in 1961 had gone to Ft.
Gulick. He argued that this proved that the army was not giving sufficient emphasis in

182

George O. Spencer (RPA/S) to Allen (ARA/RPA), 10 Apr. 1963, RG 59 General Records of

the Department of State, Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, Office of Regional Political Affairs, Country
and Subject Files, 1950-1963, Box 6, FN Defense Affairs, DEF 6-9 Schools and Academies, 1962-1963, 12; and Col. Calvin S. Hannum (Chief, OIA/USARSO) to Cyrus Vance (Undersec. Army), memorandum,
22 Aug. 1963, Increasing Latin American Students at Army Schools in Panama, RG 319, DCSOPS,
Classified Correspondence, 1961-64, Box 41, FN 1003-02, 22 Aug. 1963, 1. NARA II.

253

Latin America to counterinsurgency. He assigned Marine Corps General Victor H.

Krulak to resolve the problem. Krulak rather blithely reported back that he could not
understand why the USARCARIB School had such difficulty meeting their quotas, but
that the problem could easily be resolved by using Camp Pendleton. The USARCARIB
School, though, actually trained somewhat more than seventeen students in
counterinsurgency during 1961. No fewer than seventy-three Latin American junior
officers, with representatives from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and
Venezuela, completed the first ten-week counterinsurgency course. An additional thirtynine completed the senior officers counterinsurgency orientation course. Another fiftysix finished the military intelligence course, which included a two-week training exercise
at the Jungle Warfare Center. On top of this, thirty-two Guatemalan and seventy-four
Venezuelan MPs completed instruction at the USARCARIB School in 1961. The school
tried to make its case that the student load of the USARCARIB School is entirely
dependent upon economic factors, political conditions, and internal affairs of the Latin
American republics. The attorney general remained unconvinced. The army relieved
Colonel Schroeder as Commandant of the USARCARIB School soon after the attorney
general returned to Washington, D.C. in February 1963. Robert Kennedy had fought
with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, an army general, to get his brother, the president,
accurate information. President Kennedy battled with the Joint Chiefs who carried out
his orders but resisted his efforts to direct the course and content of their actions. In his
frustration, perhaps, the attorney general targeted the school and its commandant, not

254

only for the perceived recruitment failure, but to send a message to the diffident chair of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff.183
The Kennedy administration also tried to send a message to Latin America when
they renamed the facility at Ft. Gulick on July 1, 1963: the U.S. Army School of the
Americas. The attorney generals visit spawned the reorganization of not only training
at Ft. Gulick but the entire Caribbean Command. To ensure that the army appreciated its
priorities, President Kennedy ordered the Department of Defense to revise the command
structure for Latin America to reflect a hemispheric purpose. The Caribbean Command
received its new designation, the U.S. Southern Command. USARSOs responsibilities
extend to the tip of South America, a far cry from protection of the Panama Canal and the
shipping lanes of the Caribbean. As part of this reshuffling, the undersecretary of the
army, Cyrus Vance, ordered a complete evaluation of the training at Ft. Gulick with an
eye to increasing Latin American Students at Army Schools in Panama. The Joint
Chiefs of Staff recommended that students at Ft. Gulick also receive tours of such
institutions as the Command and General Staff College as a measure to enhance the

183

Ramsay, oral history; Thomas W. Davis (Exec. Sec., Spec. Group (CI)), memorandum, 4 Jan.
1963, Minutes of the Meeting of the Special Group (CI), RG 59 General Records of the Department of
State, Executive Secretariat, Records of the Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 2, FN
Special Group (CI) 1/17/63-3/7/63, 2. NARA II; ibid., 1; George O. Spencer (RPA/S) to Allen
(ARA/RPA), 10 Apr. 1963, RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Bureau of Inter-American
Affairs, Office of Inter-American Regional Political Affairs, Country and Subject Files, 1950-1963, Box 6,
FN Defense Affairs, DEF 6-9 Schools and Academies, 1962-1963, 1; Sterling J. Cotrell (ARA) to Special
Group (CI), memorandum, 17 Dec. 1963, Terrorism in the Latin American Countries on the Critical List:
Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Venezuela, RG 59 General Records of the Dept. of State,
Executive Secretariat, Records of the Special Group (Counter Insurgency), 1962-1966, Box 3, FN Special
Group (CI) 10/17-12/19/63, 1. NARA II; USARCARIB School, The U.S. Army Caribbean School Catalog,
1963 (USARCARIB School: Ft. Gulick, CA, 1962), vii. John B. Amos Library; and Ramsay, oral history.

255

experience for USARCARIB students.

Students would now receive diplomas and

certificates equivalent to those received by students attending classes in the United States.
The army also ordered Ft. Gulick to add an airborne training course to its regimen. The
school, for its part, had already adopted a general school policy of more time on field
operations. As an added touch, the army concurred that the newly designated School of
the Americas ought to have a new insignia. Colonel Cecil Himes, Commandant of the
USARCARIB School from 1959-1961, wrote that Latin American military students
proudly wore our school crest on their uniforms when they returned home to show
they were graduates. The army approved the new patch, which included the school
motto, Uno para todos, todos para uno.184
The staff at Ft. Gulick promptly launched yet another promotional campaign for
1963 to bolster the image of its training in Latin America. Part of that effort included the
publication of a triennial review of school activities entitled, El Faro Americano, or the
American Beacon.

In the first issue, the USARCARIB School declared that the

principal mission of the Director of Instruction is to assure that the caliber of instruction

184

JCS, General Order No. 8, 1 July 1963, Redesignation of Unit, in Col. Harry D. Temple
(USARSO) to Commandant (USARSA) letter, 13 Sep. 1963, Distinctive Insignia Request, File 228.01,
HRC 352 Schools -- U.S. Army School of the Americas, 1-2. CMH; Howard, E. Haugerud (Dep. U/ISA) to
Cyrus Vance (Undersec. Army), memorandum, 25 Apr. 1963, Increasing Latin American Students at
Army Schools in Panama, RG 391 DCSOPS, Classified Correspondence, 1961-1964, Box 41, FN 100302, 25 Apr. 1963, 1; Maj. Gen. Harold K. Johnson (DCSOPS) to Cyrus Vance (Undersec. Def.),
memorandum, 28 June 1963, Increasing Latin American Students at Army Schools in Panama, Inclosure,
Report, 1; idem, Increasing Latin American Students at Army Schools in Panama, 2; idem, Increasing
Latin American Students at Army Schools in Panama, Inclosure, Report, RG 391 DCSOPS, Classified
Correspondence, 1961-64, Box 41, FN 1003-02, 28 June 1963, 3; J. F. Monahan, to (Schroeder),
Commandant, letter, 15 Jan. 1963, Operational Analysis Report, USARCARIB School, RG 498 U.S.
Army Caribbean School [School of the Americas], Box 1, FN 201-46, Operations Planning Files, CY 1962,
5. NARA II; and JCS, General Order No. 8, 1 July 1963.

256

presented at the school is the same, or better, as the caliber of instruction presented in our
principal service schools. The review went on to call the school the only institute
wholly for perfecting Latin American military personnel.

When an Argentinean

lieutenant colonel graduated from the Command and General Staff course with honors,
his countrys ambassador presented the award.

The school regularly celebrated its

graduates, but in September 1964, the Southern Command awarded a medal of valor to
an Ecuadoran colonel and a Brazilian captain, which, the school took pains to note, is
not frequently conferred.185
The U.S. Army School of the Americas also increased the number of guest
instructors from Latin American militaries. To better facilitate the integration of Latin
American military students, the schools commandants began in 1956 to try to retain
some of the better students to remain as instructors for the subsequent session. In January
1963 El Faro Americano reported that a graduate of the Chorrillos Military School in
Peru would return to Ft. Gulick to assist after a visit home. Later that June 1963, the
USARCARIB School celebrated guest speakers from the Chorrillos Military School,
which sent a number of graduates to Ft. Gulick in 1962-1963. The Joint Chiefs reported
in late June 1963 that Ft. Gulicks efforts were working. Projected enrollment for 1964
rose considerably. That same month, the school tapped the first Latin American to an

185

USARCARIB School Mission, El faro Americano vol. 1 no. 1 (Oct. 1962), 14; El nico
instituto integral para perfeccionamiento de personal de los Ejrcitos Latinoamericanos, in Curso de
commando y estado mayor, El faro Americano vol. 1 no. 4 (Jul. 1963), 5; Graduado de honor, in El faro
Americano vol. 1 no. 1 (Oct. 1962), 14; and No es conferida con frecuencia, in El faro Americano vol. 3
no. 1 (Sept. 1964), RG 498 U.S. Army Caribbean School [School of the Americas], Box 1, FN 205-02,
Publications Records Sets, 1963, 8. NARA II.

257

administrative position when Capitan Jos A. Fierro from Mexico was assigned to the
public relations office of the newly renamed U.S. Army School of the Americas. A
board for review from Washington concluded that the adequacy, timeliness,
appropriateness and effectiveness of the academic efforts of the school are commendably
fulfilled.186
THE MOST DANGEROUS AREA
John F. Kennedy characterized Latin America as the most dangerous area in the
world. He saw in the rise of dissident insurgencies around the globe a pattern of attack
directed by Moscow.

The perceived successful cooptation of those movements by

international Communism, most notably in the case of Cuba, convinced the Kennedy
administration that the United States had to reorient its defense posture. A different era
and a different type of conflict required a different response: counterinsurgency. Latin
America, however, had proven weaknesses. Inconsistency marked military training and
capability for the region as a whole, and the Joint Chiefs feared that Latin Americans did
not adequately appreciate the extent of the Soviet threat. Ft. Gulick initially seemed the

186

RG 338 Records of the U.S. Army Commands, U.S. Army, Caribbean, 1947-1964, Box 71.
File No. 352.16; Nuevas instructores invitados, in USARCARIB School Mission, El faro Americano
vol. 1 no. 2 (Jan. 1963), 5; Graduados del Colegio Militar de Chorrillos en Per Platicn, in
USARCARIB School Mission, El faro Americano vol. 1 no. 4 (Jul. 1963), RG 498 U.S. Army Caribbean
School [School of the Americas], Box 1, FN 205-02, Publications Records Sets, 1963, 10; Maj. Gen.
Harold K. Johnson (DCSOPS) to Cyrus Vance (Undersec Def.), memorandum, 28 June 1963, Increasing
Latin American Students at Army Schools in Panama, RG 391 DSCOPS, Classified Correspondence,
1961-64, Box 41, FN 1003-02, 28 June 1963, 1; El capitn Jos A. Fierro, oriundo de Chihuahua, Mxico,
fue asignado Oficial de Relaciones Pblicas de la Escuela de las Amricas, in USARCARIB School
Mission, El faro Americano vol. 1 no. 4 (Jul. 1963), RG 498 U.S. Army Caribbean School [School of the
Americas], Box 1, FN 205-02, Publications Records Sets, 1963, 12; and Johnson to Cyrus Vance,
Increasing Latin American Students, 2. NARA II.

258

best place to provide the counterinsurgency training that Latin America needed.
Instructors at the USARCARIB School brought their experience to Ft. Bragg to provide
the foundation for counterinsurgency training at the Special Warfare Center. And the
school expanded its own offerings, including a course just for senior grade officers. But
despite the efforts of the USARCARIB School to become the primary installation for
counterinsurgency training, the U.S. Army preferred the Special Warfare Center at Ft.
Bragg. Beyond that, the change in policy had led to a fundamental shift in training
throughout the entire military establishment. Consequently, the USARCARIB School
rapidly found itself simply one of a multitude of training options available to the United
States military. The name change to the U.S. Army School of the Americas did not
change Ft. Gulicks role. The Joint Chiefs still wanted to direct training via MAAGs,
missions, and military attachs to U.S. embassies in the region. And even beyond these
staples, Special Forces Mobile Training Teams (MTTs) became the favored assessment
and training instrument. Not only could the U.S. armed services keep costs down in this
manner, the Joint Chiefs could target training more specifically to meet the needs of the
United States rather than the often misguided desires of Latin Americans.
Not surprisingly, the United States slotted Latin America for a rather limited role
in the new defense posture: internal security and anti-submarine defense. The JCS first
enunciated this new role at the end of November 1961 with JCSM 832-61. To begin
with, the Joint Chiefs argued the need to orient the Latin American armed forces to
accept the apolitical role of the military. Next, the United States believed that it needed
to reorient the Latin American leadership . . . toward internal rather than external
259

security. JCSM 832-61 argued that improving the capability of indigenous forces in
disaster relief would help shift the regions military to internal priorities. JCSM 832-61
then detailed the variety of U.S. armed forces activities vis a vis Latin America, the
overwhelming bulk of which, in most respects, had emerged under Eisenhower. Now,
however, these programs fulfilled a grander purpose.

For example, JCSM 832-61

recommended that the United States government expand a public relations mainstay of
the 1950s, the Inter-American Geodetic Survey, since accurate topographic maps of
Latin America are required for hemispheric defense and for economic and sociological
development (not to mention internal security). Latin America would continue its coast
watching responsibility, but now the United States would line the coasts with the
technologically advanced detection posts. The report also foresaw the Inter-American
Defense College as an excellent means for increasing US influence among the current
and emerging Latin American military leadership. Later in March 1962, the deputy
assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs singled out the InterAmerican Defense Board to improve Latin American combined intelligence capability.
Additionally, the Joint Chiefs suggested that the United States should provide
opportunities for Latin American scientific personnel to work and study in US military
installations in the fields of food service, sanitation, medicine, and the technical fields.
Most of all, the United States military insisted that the Latin American military man
must be motivated to help his country help itself.187

187

Lemnitzer to President Kennedy, JCSM 832-61, Military Actions for Latin America (U),
Appendix A, Military Actions for Latin America Part I Recommendations with Statement of the

260

The United States wanted Latin American counterinsurgency students to take U.S.
training back to their military. But the United States still possessed limited training
capacity by August 1961. The Joint Chiefs of Staff received a progress report on
August 3, 1961 that highlighted the training provided by the Caribbean Command,
especially that offered by the USARCARIB School at Ft. Gulick. The Report listed
courses in riot control, anti-guerilla, and psychological operations. Additionally,
the joint secretariat to the JCS stressed the emphasis placed by the Caribbean Command
on the assessment work being done by the various MAAGs assigned in Ecuador and
Guatemala and the requests for internal security training made by Bolivia, Chile
Paraguay, Peru, Nicaragua, Cost Rica, and Honduras. Most important, the Caribbean
Command touted the creation of mobile training teams, graduates of the programs at
Ft. Bragg and Ft. Gulick who would form the cadres dispatched to Latin American
countries for purposes of assisting in the establishment of in-country training courses.188

Problem and Need for Action; Lemnitzer to President Kennedy, JCSM 832-61, Appendix B, Military
Actions for Latin America Part II, 10; ibid., 6; Hayden Williams (Dep. ASD/ISA) to Gen. Maxwell
Taylor (Chair Spec. Group CI), memorandum, 2 Mar. 1962, Report on Participation of U.S. and Latin
American Armed Forces in the Attainment of Common Objectives in Latin America, Tab A-4; idem,
Report on Participation of U.S. and Latin American Armed Forces in the Attainment o Common
Objectives in Latin America, Appendix B, Annex A, Ideas Being Considered for Possible Development
and Future Submission, NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 118JCS Proposal, Tab B, Annex c, 4-33, 7;
Lemnitzer to President Kennedy, JCSM 832-61, Annex D, Proposed Implementation for a Latin
American Military Information and Education Program, to Appendix B, Military Actions for Latin
America Part II, Attachment to Gen. Maxwell Taylor (Chair Spec. Group CI) to McGeorge Bundy
(Spec. Asst. NSA), memorandum, 5 Dec. 1961, 6. Kennedy Presidential Library.
188

E. J. Blouin and M. J. Ingelido (Joint Sec. JCS) to JCS, note, JCS 1976/375, 3 Aug. 1961,
Progress Report on the Program of Department of Defense Support to the Strengthening of Internal
Security in Latin America Including Status of Development of Counterguerrilla Forces (U), 3536; idem,
Progress Report on the Program of Department of Defense Support to the Strengthening of Internal
Security in Latin America Including Status of Development of Counterguerrilla Forces (U), Capt. E. S.
Powell (DCOS/CINCARIB) to JCS, memorandum, 29 July 1961, Progress Report, Inclosure 1, Progress

261

By November, however, the Caribbean Command had favorable news. The Joint
Chiefs learned that recent graduates of the Fort Gulick counter-resistance course from
El Salvador were scheduled to give counterinsurgency courses at the General Command
Staff School in their country. Honduras, too, followed suit as three recent graduates
from Ft. Gulick now provided training to a Unit of the 1st Honduran Military Zone.
Costa Rica planned to have as many as 120 members of its National Police receive
training at Ft. Gulick by the end of 1962. And Nicaragua determined that all new
lieutenants in the Guardia Nacional must receive six months counterguerrilla instruction
in order to train border patrol units. Even Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil sought out
U.S. counterresistance training. The USARCARIB School set up one special course just
for members of Argentinas general staff as well as one entire ten-week
counterinsurgency section for a class of cadets in the fall of 1961. The General Staff
School of the Military Institute of Superior Studies in Uruguay now had in its
curriculum a number of hours devoted to counter-resistance subjects taught by
graduates of the USARCARIB School. And Brazils airborne units established their own
Ranger-Special Forces School. Latin America was taking the training home.189

Report on the Program of Department of Defense Support to the Strengthening of Internal Security in Latin
America Including Status of Development of Counterguerrilla Forces as of 30 June 1961, RG 218,
Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Central Decimal File, 1961, Box 165, FN CCS 9122/9105 Central
America (8 May (2)), Sec. 1, 2; ibid., 1; and ibid., 3.
189

Lt. Col. R. N. Dallam (Sec. COS/CINCARIB) to JCS, memorandum, 1 Nov. 1961, Progress
Report, Inclosure 1, Progress Report on the Program of Department of Defense Support to the
Strengthening of Internal Security in Latin America Including Status of Development of Counterguerrilla
Forces as of 30 Sept. 1961, in F. J. Blouin and M. J. Ingelido (Joint Sec. JCS) to JCS, note, JCS
1976/375, 8 Nov. 1961, in Progress Report on the Program of Department of Defense Support to the
Strengthening of Internal Security in Latin America Including Status of Development of Counterguerrilla

262

The classes at Ft. Gulick proved to be but the first of an inclusive training
regimen. Even though the president struggled with the JCS over control of the pace and
direction with which the United States integrated counterinsurgency training in 1961 and
1962, the JCS could by January 1962 boast of forty-seven different programs designed to
increase internal security in Latin America. The United States military now had a wide
array of training facilities in all branches of the armed services, providing internal
security tours, civil affairs training, riot control and psychological operations, and
hydrographic training, along with the essential counterguerrilla or counterresistance
operations training. If foreign militaries wanted training outside their own countries
service schools, then the Department of Defense directed them to U.S. military schools
and colleges, not the facility in Panama.

General Lemnitzer had already rejected

language as an impediment to Latin American military instruction, contending that an

English language refresher course perhaps using tapes and listening booths will
suffice in most cases. Still, the Department of Defense wanted more officers teaching in
Latin American service academies. In early 1962, the United States had instructors
serving on faculties of military schools in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.
The United States, however, proved reluctant to send its troops to Latin American service
schools as students. In mid-September 1961, the Joint Chiefs received a report from Ft.
Amador that eighteen of the forty-eight military schools in Latin America those in
Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Venezuela are considered

Forces (U), RG 218, Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Central Decimal File, 1961, Box 165, FN
CCS 9122/9105 (8 May (2)), Sec. 1 Central America, 2; ibid., 3; ibid., 3-4; ibid., 2; and ibid., 4.

263

appropriate for attendance by United States military officers.

Brazil patterned the

Superior War College in Brazil after the U.S. National War College. Rear Admiral E. J.
Blouin, the secretary to the Joint Chiefs, warned his commanders in mid-November, 1961
that Latins are proud of these schools and resent the fact that the United States
consistently refuses to accept proffered vacancies. Hence, he recommended that U.S.
officers attend Latin schools prior to teaching there as part of MAAG and mission duty.
So, despite the secretary of the armys initial enthusiasm for the training offered at Ft.
Gulick, by the end of 1961, the USARCARIB School had simply become one of many
training options available to the U.S. armed forces, and not the preferred mode of
instruction.190

190

L. L. Lemnitzer (Chair JCS) to Robert McNamara (Sec. of Def.), memorandum, JCSM 30-62,
13 Jan. 19, Participation of the US and Latin American Forces in the Attainment of Common Objectives
in Latin America, Appendix A, Participation of the US and Latin American Forces in the Attainment of
Common Objectives in Latin America, Annex A, Current Action to Comply with NSAM No. 118 (These
Are New Proposals or Recommendations for Substantive Augmentation of Programs Already in Existence
(Annex B)), and Annex B, Programs Underway in Support of JCSM 832-61 Prior to Issuance of NSAM
No. 118, 1-3; idem, Appendix A, Annex B, Programs Underway in Support of JCSM 832-61 Prior to
Issuance of NSAM No. 118, NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 118-JCS Proposal Tab B, Annex A, 3/62,
1; Roswell L. Gilpatric (Dep. Sec. of Def.) to McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA), memorandum,
Department of Defense Report on NSAM 131 Training Objectives for Counter-Insurgency, Annex,
Counterinsurgency Training for U.S. and Foreign Officers in U.S. Military Schools and Colleges, NSF,
NSAM, Box 334, FN NSAM 131 Training Objectives for Counterinsurgency, Memoranda, 6/1-6/4/62, 122; Lemnitzer to President Kennedy, JCSM 832-61, Appendix B, Military Actions for Latin America
Part II, 1-2. Kennedy Presidential Library; Daniel A. OConnor (COSCARIBCOM) to JCS,
memorandum, 18 Sept. 1961, Attendance of Latin American Staff Colleges/Schools by United States
Military Officers, Enclosure, RG 218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Central Decimal File,
1961, Box 165, FN CCS 9122-2000 Central America (18 Sept. 1961), 1-2; Elbrick (Ro de Janeiro) to
Department of State, airgram, #A-511, 2 Sept. 1969, Role of Military in Brazil, Enclosure, Embassy
Contribution to JCS Report on Role of the Military, RG 59 General Records of the Department of State,
Central Foreign Policy Files, 1967-1969, Political and Defense, Box 1569, FN DEF 1/1/69 LA, 1-11.
NARA II. See also Davis, Brotherhood of Arms, 93-115. RAdm. E. J. Blouin (Sec. JCS) to JCS,
memorandum, 15 Nov. 1961, Attendance at Latin American Staff Schools/Colleges by US Officers (U),
Enclosure C, RG 218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Central Decimal File, 1961, Box 165, FN
CCS 9122-2000 Central America (18 Sept. 1961), 3586. NARA II; and ibid., 3583.

264

The Joint Chiefs preferred training directed by U.S. armed forces personnel in
country. Since the 1940s, the Joint Chiefs emphasized as a matter of policy the training
supplied by MAAGs, missions, and even military attachs to U.S. embassies in the
region. Speaking for the Joint Chiefs, Chairman General Lemnitzer argued in JCSM
832-61 that training should take place in their home countries. A January 30, 1962,
memorandum to the Special Group (CI) from General Lemnitzer detailed the wide array
of U.S. service academies, schools, and colleges that provided the latest on military
training in counterinsurgency . . . as it pertains to MAAG, mission, and attach
assignments. The most important of these, not surprisingly, was the Special Warfare
Center at Ft. Bragg, which had undergone significant expansion in 1961 to accommodate
the increased attention to counterinsurgency training in addition to the unconventional
and psychological warfare training programs already in place.191
Ideally, the Defense Department wanted to use Special Forces Mobile Training
Teams to train indigenous small, efficient, and mobile brushfire units for internal
security problems. A review of the 7th Special Forces activities in Columbia by the
Strategic Army Command recommended that all MTT phased into South America
attend the counterinsurgency course at Ft. Gulick as well as at the Jungle Warfare
Center. In 1963, Ft. Sherman closed and Ft. Gulick took over Jungle training. The army

191

Lemnitzer to President Kennedy, JCSM 832-61, Appendix B, Military Actions for Latin
America Part II, 1; Lt. Gen. L. L. Lemnitzer (Chair JCS) to Special Group (CI), memorandum, CM 53062, 30 Jan. 1962, Training Related to Counter-Insurgency Matters, (U), Attachment, Military Training
in Counterinsurgency and Related Matters as it Pertains to MAAG, Mission, and Attach Assignments,
NSF, M & M, Box 319, FN Spec. Group (CI), Military Training Report, 1/30/62, 1-44; and ibid., 5-6.

265

assigned elements of the 7th Special Forces Group . . . to the Canal Zone in order to give
CINCARIB an immediate pool of qualified personnel to participate in training of
indigenous forces in counterinsurgency and other related operations, i.e., civic action,
psychological warfare, counter-guerrilla warfare, and anti-subversion. In 1963, the U.S.
Army established 8th Special Forces with headquarters at Fort. Gulick. Mobile Training
Teams accounted for the majority of internal security training in Latin America in 1962.
Only 435 foreign military received training at U.S. facilities in 1961, and of those only
seventy five came from the western hemisphere. Europe, for example, had only sixtyone students in fiscal year 1961 and Iran had more than all of Europe. Vietnam sent more
students to the U.S. school than Europe and the Middle East combined. But in 1962, the
United States trained more Panamanian National Guardsmen than they did soldiers from
Vietnam. The United States sent more advisors to Laos in 1962 to train that nations
military in the latest counterinsurgency doctrine than were sent to the rest of the world.192

192

Hayden Williams (Dep. ASD/ISA) to Gen. Maxwell Taylor (Chair Spec. Group CI),
memorandum, 2 Mar. 1962, Report on Participation of U.S. and Latin American Armed Forces in the
Attainment o Common Objectives in Latin America, Appendix B, Annex A, Ideas Being Considered for
Possible Development and Future Submission, NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN NSAM 118JCS Proposal,
Tab B, Annex c, 4-33, 7; Col. R. H. Moore (Exec. SACSA) to Special Group (CI), memorandum, Report
of Visit to Colombia, South America, by a Team from Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
(U); Kennedy Presidential Library; Hugh Gardner, 15 Apr. 1968, USARSO, Jungle Warfare Training in
the Canal Zone, HMF 2-017, 13. CMH; Hayden Williams (Dep. ASD/ISA) to Gen. Maxwell Taylor
(Chair Spec. Group CI), memorandum, 2 Mar. 1962, Report on Participation of U.S. and Latin American
Armed Forces in the Attainment of Common Objectives in Latin America, NSF, NSAM, Box 333, FN
NSAM 118-JCS Proposal Tab A-1 A-14, 3/62, Tab A-3. Kennedy Presidential Library; and USARSO,
8th Special Forces Group, 1st Special Forces, Special Action Force Latin America, Historical Supplement,
1968-69, HMF 2-088. CMH; and Roswell Gilpatric (Dep. Sec. of Def.) to McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst.
NSA), memorandum, 5 June 1962, Department of Defense Report on NSAM 131 Training Objectives
for Counter-Insurgency, Annex B, Number of Foreign Students Attending Counter-Insurgency Courses
in the CONUS and Overseas by Fiscal Year, NSF, NDSM, Box 334, FN 131 Training Objectives for
Counterinsurgency, Memoranda 6/1-6/4/62, 1-5. Kennedy Presidential Library.

266

Few countries, however, responded to USARCARIB School offerings. Panama

regularly sent National Guard cadres, and forty-nine Costa Rican and nearly a score
Nicaraguan and Honduran police each finished courses at Ft. Gulick. Relatively few
Latin American military took advantage of military intelligence (28), counterinsurgency
(87), or ranger (1) training at either Ft. Gulick or Ft. Bragg in 1962. Furthermore, only a
handful of U.S. military trainers went especially to Latin American nations to provide
internal security instruction. Instead, Mobile Training Teams accounted for the bulk of
counterinsurgency and military intelligence training. Teams went to all the Central
American countries, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Venezuela, and the Dominican
Republic.

These teams could have a pronounced impact.

MTTs to Guatemala

established a Special Warfare School that trained the nations military and provided
police their weapons and riot control training. Troops trained by the Special Forces
teams helped the embattled President Ydigoras fend off yet another coup attempt in early
February that was led by troops trained at the USARCARIB School. Perhaps that is why
Roger Hilsman told officers at Ft. Benning in May 1962 that guerrilla forces inside and
outside Guatemala at present constitute only a minor threat to the countrys internal
security.193

193

Dallam Progress Report, Inclosure 1, Progress Report, 1-5. NARA II; Roswell Gilpatric
(Dep. Sec. of Def.) to McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA), memorandum, 5 June 1962, Department of
Defense Report on NSAM 131 Training Objectives for Counter-Insurgency, Annex B, Number of
Foreign Students Attending Counter-Insurgency Courses in the CONUS and Overseas by Fiscal Year,
NSF, NDSM, Box 334, FN 131 Training Objectives for Counterinsurgency, Memoranda 6/1-6/4/62, 5.
Kennedy Presidential Library; Dallam, Progress Report, 6. NARA II; ibid., 1-5. See also Michael
McClintock, Strategies of Statecraft: U.S. Guerrilla Warfare, Counter-Insurgency, and Counterterrorism,
1940-1990 (New York: Pantheon, 1992), 187-8; Child, Unequal Alliance, 408; Victor Marchetti and John
D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (London: Jonathan Cope, 1971), 124; and Barber and

267

The region as a whole did not bristle with steely-eyed revolutionaries. Despite the
revolution of rising expectations underway in Latin America, the region did not
represent a great threat to the security of the United States in the first three years of the
Kennedy administration.

Apolitical rural-based bandits plagued the Colombian

countryside who for their own purpose, have helped prevent the expansion of
communist-controlled enclaves. The Caribbean Command kept tabs on the political,
economic, and social dynamics of each of the countries under its watch and in early 1963
the Commanding General issued a report to the Joint Chiefs assessing the threat level in
each of the seventeen Latin American countries. The Caribbean Command reported that,
in Bolivia, Victor Paz Estenssoro utilized his own Tiger Brigade, former cadets trained
by U.S. Special Forces, to arrest a number of opposition party leaders who had been
agitating after the fraudulent summer 1962 elections. Political and economic difficulties
marked Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, but no subversive threat existed outside of a few
peasants agitating in northeast Brazil.

Ecuador experienced considerable political

unrest due to the personal instability of the nations president, Carlos Julio
Arosemena. El Salvador, a staunch ally against Cuba, contained and probably reduced
the subversive threat because the government did not hesitate to use strong repressive

Ronning, Internal Security and Military Power, 99. Roswell Gilpatric (ASD/ISA) to President Kennedy,
memorandum, 11 Apr. 1963, Capability of Guatemalan Government to Control Riots, NSF, Country
Files, Guatemala, Box 101 FN General 4-7/63, 1. Kennedy Presidential Library. Quoted in George Ball
(Acting Sec. Inter-American Affairs) to CINCARIB, telegram, #A-1, 16 Mar. 1962, RG 59 General
Records of the Department of State, Central Decimal Files, 1960-63, Box 1508, FN 711F.00/11-260, 1.
NARA II; and Lt. Col. George Hardgrove (Dir. Infantry School) to Roger Hilsman (ASS/IR), letter, 12
June 1962, Hilsman, Subj., Box 6, papers, FN Communist Insurgency, 5/62, 8. Kennedy Presidential
Library.

268

measures against the communists.

The Special National Intelligence Estimate of

November 9, 1962 advised President Kennedy that Castros efforts, with Soviet help . . .
have not produced significant results. Instead, the report argued that the dangerously
unstable situation that prevails throughout much of Latin America is the product of
fundamental inequalities and historic circumstances; it is not the creation of Castro and
the Soviets. Still, on February 18, 1963, Kennedy authorized his staff to push Congress
for more Military Assistance Program monies to counter Cuban subversion and then
formalized on March 15, 1962 a broad-ranging effort to isolate Castro from the rest of
Latin America, including plans to fingerprint travelers going from Mexico to Cuba,
harassment of Cuban officials, and continued U.S. sea and air surveillance of the
Caribbean area contiguous to Cuba. That spring, Kennedy also resumed the clandestine
campaign against Castro while the Special Group (CI) abjured U.S. military and
diplomatic personnel to dissuade Latin Americans from their penchant for jets.194

194

Hardgrove to Hilsman, letter, 12 June 1962, 8. Kennedy Presidential Library; Macon A. Hipp,
Headquarters, Caribbean Command, Caribbean Command Annual History, 1962, Annex B, Central and
South America, HMF. 8-2A.8 AA 1962, 1-38. CMH; ibid., 3; ibid., 7-9; ibid., 16; ibid., 20; John H.
McCone (Dir. CIA) to President Kennedy, memorandum, SNIE 85-4-62, 9 Nov. 1962, Castros
Subversive Capabilities in Latin America, Item #102, Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, vol. XII, American
Republics, 234-5; Joseph A Califano, Jr. (Spec. Asst. Sec. of the Army), memorandum, 18 Feb. 1963,
Meeting with The President on 18 February 1963, Item #105, Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, vol. XII,
American Republics, 238-9; Cyrus Vance (Sec. of the Army) to Robert McNamara, memorandum, 15 Mar.
1963, Interdepartmental Coordinating Committee of Cuban Affairs: Movement of Subversives and
Subversive Trainees, Item #107, Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, vol. XII, American Republics, 242-7;
John Giglio, The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991), 219;
Warren Hincle and William W. Turner, The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War Against Castro (New
York: Harper & Row, 1981), 192-219; and Department of State, circular telegram, 1491, 27 Feb. 1963,
Military Assistance for Internal Security in Latin America, Item #106, Foreign Relations, 1961-1963,
vol. XII, American Republics, 241 came at the direction of McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to NSC,
memorandum, NSAM 206, 4 Dec. 1962, Military Assistance for Internal Security in Latin America,
NSF, NSAM, Box 338-9, FN NSAM 206, 1. Kennedy Presidential Library.

269

RHETORIC AND REALITY

John F. Kennedy saw the Cuban Revolution as part of Moscows latest attack on
freedom in the west. For Kennedy, Khrushchevs declaration in support of wars of
national liberations, Castros May 1, 1961 commitment to socialism and dictatorship in
Cuba, and the publication of Ch Guevaras Guerrilla Warfare were all manifestations of
war in the Western Hemisphere. To meet that threat, Kennedy launched a massive
reorientation of the United States defense posture.

The abrupt dismissal of the

hemispheric defense posture that characterized the Eisenhower administration reflected a

comprehensive shift to implement counterinsurgency doctrine in every part of U.S. armed
forces training.

For Walt Rostow, counterinsurgency training possessed the dual

function of thwarting Communist subversion while helping the Latin American military
to preserve the internal security necessary for the underdeveloped economies of the
region to respond to the economic stimulus of the Alliance for Progress. The Alliance for
Progress, however, never amounted to much. The Kennedy administration forged ahead
with the instruments of development: the Peace Corps, the Agency for International
Development, and the insistence on civic action in all military training. The reality of
Latin American military-social relations, however, muted the impact of those agencies on
the region. Thats why the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September 1962
characterized the paltry civic action efforts in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, and Uruguay as compatible with their [the militarys]

270

potential. Instead, the military of Latin America embraced counterinsurgency as a

means to preserve internal security against Cuban-sponsored subversion.195
The USARCARIB School initially seemed like the best resource to upgrade the
Latin American military in counterinsurgency doctrine. The secretary of the army touted
the USARCARIB School as the best locus for the new push to bring the underprepared
Latin American military into consonance with new military policy for the hemisphere.
But, instead, the USARCARIB School quickly faded into the background despite its
initial salience and decided training advantages. The classes at Ft. Gulick and Ft. Bragg
in the summer of 1961 proved to be but the first of a broad range of training in all facets
of Defense and State Department activities. And the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to keep
direct control of internal security training. By early 1963, the United States military had
made the necessary adjustments; America was ready to meet the threat of irregular
warfare. The JCS deemed that most of the regions militaries already possessed the
requisite professionalism and material readiness to stymie the inconsistent and generally
pitiful revolutionary movements that rarely flared in the early 1960s. Now that proper
training had appropriately reoriented a generation of Latin American officers toward
internal security, thanks to the able assistance of U.S. advisors, they could do the job.

195

Jerome Levinson and Juan de Onis, The Alliance that Lost Its Way (Chicago: Quadrangele,
1970), remains the most detailed analysis of the failed Alliance for Progress. See also Diane B. Kunz,
Butter and Guns: Americas Cold War Economic Diplomacy (New York: The Free Press, 1997), 120-48;
William O. Walker, III, Mixing the Sweet with the Sour: Kennedy, Johnson, and Latin America, in The
Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations during the 1960s, ed. Diane B. Kunz (New
York: Colombia University Press, 1994), 49-57; and Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 147-72; and Lt. Gen. L.
L. Lemnitzer (Chair JCS) to Robert McNamara (Sec. of Def.), memorandum, JCSM 704-62, 13 Sept. 1962,
Participation of US and Latin American Armed Forces in the Attainment of Common Objectives in Latin
America (U), NSF, NSAM, Box 335, FN NSAM 140, 5. Kennedy Presidential Library.

271

Colombia and Ecuador, along with Central America and the Caribbean, however, needed
considerable help. In the 1950s, the Joint Chiefs preferred its own military missions and
MAAGs assigned to embassies to assess military and security threat levels in various
nations and to provide any training the U.S. deemed necessary. In the 1960s, that
practice underwent a marked shift as Special Forces groups, trained at the Special
Warfare College at Ft. Bragg, undertook assignments as needed on a case-by-base basis.
For the Joint Chiefs, these Mobile Training Teams had already begun to make significant
inroads in rectifying the doctrinal imbalance. And while the newly anointed U.S. Army
School of the Americas had incorporated counterinsurgency training for the specific
purpose of maintaining internal security into every aspect of its curriculum, the U.S.
Army did its best to return the school to its previous fringe role within the training regime
of the United States military.
President Kennedy kept up the public face on his Latin American policy in midFebruary 1963 when he declared that Latin America is the most critical area in the world
today. But his advisors had concurred the previous November that Cuba posed no
immediate threat. Latin America had been trained, and the requisite systems had been
put in place to deal with dissidents. So the administration turned to the growing trouble
in Southeast Asia. Rural and urban guerrilla movements did emerge from time to time in
Latin America after the Cuban Revolution. During the 1960s, and on into the 1970s and
1980s, authorities in Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, Uruguay, and most notably in El
Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, battled leftists of many different persuasions for the
hearts and minds or at least obedience of their countrymen. Those movements
272

developed amidst a powerful era of change, in which social expectations fractured under
the weight of transistor radios, child immunizations, and mosquito abatement
programs.196
The resulting massive rural to urban movement has forced elites in every country
in the region, with varying degrees of success, to develop new constructs in a fight to
maintain their asymmetrical social, political, and economic position.

Fidel Castro

remains a thorn in the side of American imperial prestige. But the ability of Castro to
export his revolutionary ideology or his tactics proved extremely limited. Perhaps most
important, the fitful and often hopelessly divided revolutionary movements that did
manage to make a name for themselves succeeded all too well in forging solidarity
amongst the one institution pledged to defending la patria: the military. The strident
rhetoric of revolutionaries never matched their battlefield successes and only spawned
waves of brutal, staunchly anti-Communist authoritarian dictatorships.197

196

Press conference reported in NYT, 13 Feb. 1963, p. A1. col. 4. See Ch Guevara, Guerrilla
Warfare, eds. Loveman and Davies (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1985), 182-419; and Timothy
Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and
Regimes since 1950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 67-8.
197

Alfred Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1988); Frederick Nunn, The Time of the Generals: Latin American Professional
Militarism in World Perspective (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992); Loveman, La Patria; Ch
Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, eds. Loveman and Davies; Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in
Latin America; and Barber and Ronning, Internal Security.

273

Chapter 5:
Human Rights at the School of Assassins:
The U.S. Army School of the Americas, 1964-2001
The Kennedy administration fundamentally altered the discourse of U.S. policy
toward Latin America. The Alliance for Progress rested on the assumption of Walt
Rostow and others who argued that traditional ways of life trapped underdeveloped
societies of the world in primitive patterns of behavior that seemed to satisfy historical
necessities while effectively stifling the transition to modernity. Hence, the United States
needed to jump start this process and shift the underdeveloped regions Latin America
especially back onto the natural evolution of the development process. In short, U.S.
policy needed to create the requisite social and political conditions necessary for their
progression to the next stage of development.198 The Alliance for Progress, launched
with such fanfare and rhetorical flourish, failed miserably. Latin Americans eager for
U.S. aid and the trappings of modernity automobiles, airplanes, and air pollution
embraced Kennedys vision. But La Alianza, as it was called, dwindled rather quickly in
the face of administrative neglect, the lack of Congressional mandate money and
compelling issues elsewhere that simply turned President Kennedys gaze away from

198

See Max F. Millikin and Walt W. Rostow, A Proposal: Key to an Effective Foreign Policy
(New York: Harper, 1957); Dankwart Rustow, Transitions to Democracy: Toward A Dynamic Model,
Comparative Politics vol. 11 no. 3 (Apr. 1970), 337-363; Robert Alan Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and
Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 1-47; Samuel P. Huntington, Will More Countries
Become Democratic? Political Science Quarterly vol. 99 no. 2 (Sum. 1984), 193-218 for the persistence of

274

Latin America with increasing frequency. Nevertheless, Rostow had implanted in the
consciousness of the United States government a new term, a new concept: development.
Since 1963, the style and occasionally the substance of U.S. policy toward Latin America
has shifted with each presidency, but the underlying premise has not. Each successive
president of the last four decades has sought, in some way, to promote economic
development in the region. The language has evolved, and now the United States refers
to helping the region achieve sustainable development. But each president has in turn
been forced to address, directly, the tradeoff between preserving the internal security that
proponents of development crave and promoting democracy in a region better known for
anti-democratic military dictatorships. During the cold war, anti-Communism usually
decided the issue.
The U.S. Army School of the Americas generally did not play a significant role in
providing internal security training to Latin America in the two decades that followed the
death of John F. Kennedy. The Military Assistance Program continued to serve as the
primary vehicle for military aid and training to the region, and the school provided
courses per MAP dictates. The army still preferred the service schools in the United
States, and the Department of Defense used Mobile Training Teams to target specific
security threats. For the next twenty years, the school receded further in significance
within the U.S. Army training regimen.

So, too, did Latin America dwindle in

importance to the United States. First the engrossing war in Southeast Asia robbed

this view; and Walt W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960).

275

energy from U.S.-Latin American policy, and then the subsequent fallout of the Vietnam
War led critics of internal security training by the end of the 1970s to seriously challenge
the schools existence.

And throughout the cold war, the Soviet Union loomed

paramount in policy considerations. Successive presidential administrations struggled to

forge a dtente with the USSR while managing the nuclear arms race. In the meantime,
waves of enduring authoritarian meaning anti-Communist dictatorships swept through
Latin America in the early and late 1960s and then again in the early and mid 1970s.
U.S. private investment in Latin America grew at unprecedented rates in the 1970s, and
American policymakers spoke of the power of trade to gradually wean the region away
from its dependency on military regimes. The United States did not include the School of
the Americas as a part of policy deliberations in any meaningful way until Central
American dominos seemed poised to fall in the early 1980s.

To circumvent

congressional restrictions on military aid, the Reagan administration used the school at
Ft. Gulick to train thousands of Nicaraguan Contras and El Salvadoran regular army and
special forces units. The widespread atrocities perpetrated by many of these soldiers led
critics of President Reagans Central American policy to dub Ft. Gulick the School of
Assassins.199 The school moved to Ft. Benning, Georgia, in 1984, but it has struggled
since to move beyond the legacy of those few years.

199

School of Americas, School of Assassins, (New York: Maryknoll World Productions, 1994),
20 min., Video.

276

BACK TO THE BENCH

United States policy toward Latin America shifted by early 1964.

Lyndon

Johnson was now the president, and Latin America did not hold the same fascination for
him. A political creature par excellence, however, President Johnson appreciated even
more than his former boss the domestic political fallout of international failures. And he
was determined not to have his administration fail to contain Communism anywhere in
the world, let alone the Western Hemisphere. Consequently, Johnson reacted to the
growing populism of Brazilian President Joo Goulart with alarm and offered U.S.
military aid to assist the Brazilian military with his ouster in April 1964. The Brazilian
generals did not need the help, but Johnson followed with a substantial military aid
program that escalated an already close relationship between the United States and the
Brazilian military and helped cement authoritarian rule in that country for decades. A
year later, Johnson grossly overreacted to instability in the Dominican Republic by
sending 22,000 U.S. troops.

The president deliberately misled Congress and the

American people about the degree of Communist subversion there and the threat to
American property on the Caribbean island nation. But he was willing to do whatever it
took to assure himself of one thing: there would be no more Cubas on Lyndon Johnsons
watch.

And the invasion did manage to ease congressional opposition to Military

Assistance Program internal security aid.

With the 1965 appropriations, Congress

modified section 511(b) to read, to the maximum extent feasible, military assistance
will abide by agreements reached with the Organization of American States.

The

president now had the discretion to apply MAP money to internal security with a
277

minimum of paperwork. Congress did limit that aid to $55 million annually in material
for the region as a whole, and no more than $25 million to any one country. Brazil
received that $25 million. The following year, Congress included material and training in
the 55/25 split. And, Congress put the secretary of state not the secretary of defense
in charge of the dispensation of MAP monies.200
Ten new military coups had interrupted democracy in Latin America since 1961
forcing Johnson, as a matter of policy, to decide how to respond to anti-democratic forces
in Latin America. The president did not wait long. Lyndon Johnson signed off on the
foundation of his Latin American policy on Feb. 17, 1964. NSAM 283 institutionalized
the counterinsurgency training programs established in the previous three years. The
Johnson administration focused on the Military Assistance Program to provide internal
security training. Thomas Mann, the new Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American
Affairs, did not have much faith in the Alliance for Progress. Mann, who had a long
career in the State Department serving on Latin American issues and as Kennedys

200

H. W. Brands, The Limits of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Michael W. Weis, Cold Warriors and Coups detat: BrazilianAmerican Relations, 1945-1964 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993); Ruth Leacock,
Requiem for Revolution: The United States and Brazil, 1961-1969 (London: Kent State University Press,
1990); and Thomas Skidmore, Politics in Brazil, 1930-1964 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).
Abraham F. Lowenthal, The Dominican Intervention (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1995), [1972]; Jerome Slater, Intervention and Negotiation: The United States and the Dominican
Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Theodore Draper, The Dominican Revolt: A Case Study in
American Policy (New York: Commentary Report, 1968); and Tad Szulc, Dominican Diary (New York:
Praeger, 1965). Department of State, AID, Latin American Internal Security Programs Under Mutual
Security Act 1960, Foreign Assistance Acts 1961-1965, Parts I-IV, RG 59 General Records of the
Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, 1964-66, Box 2413 FN POL 23 LA 9/11/65, 28-29.
NARA II; Peter H. Smith, Talons of the Eagle: Dynamics of U.S. Latin American Relations (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997), 157; Department of State, AID, Latin American Internal Security
Programs, 38. NARA II; and ibid., 30.

278

ambassador to Mexico, purged the State Department of Alliance adherents. President

Johnson did not have any more patience with the Alliance for Progress than Thomas
Mann, which is why the president gave him considerable latitude to oversee everyday
Latin American policy. Anti-Communist stability mattered to the president and Mann
believed, pragmatically in his eyes, that the Latin American military were on the whole
a pretty decent group of people who would maintain order for the United States. Mann
made the new policy clear in mid-March 1964 at a three-day meeting of U.S.
ambassadors to the region when he directed those assembled to preserve U.S. property,
promote opportunity for American business, and adopt a strict neutrality on anything
besides Communism. Mann tapped into the history of U.S.-Latin American relations
when he told reporters on March 18, 1964 that, with this new emphasis, the United States
would abide by the non-intervention agreement signed in Bogot in 1948. He echoed
that point nearly three months later at Notre Dame when he remarked that the United
States should encourage democracy in a quiet, unpublicized way, and the nation could
not interfere unless a regime change represented a breach in established international
conduct.201

201

Brian Loveman, For La Patria: Politics and the Armed Forces in Latin America (Wilmington:
Scholarly Resources, 1999), 172; McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to the National Security Council,
memorandum, NSAM 283, 13 Feb. 1964, U.S. Overseas Internal Defense Training Policy and
Objectives, RG 286 Records of the Agency for International Development, 1961-, Office of Public Safety,
Office of the Director, Numerical File, 1956-74, Box 5, FN IPS 7-1 Natl. Security Council (NSA
Memoranda), 1-4. NARA II; Thomas Mann, oral history, Johnson Presidential Library, in David F.
Schmitz, Thank God Theyre on Our Side: The United States and Right Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 265; Tad Szulc, NY Times, 19 Mar. 1964, p. A1
col. 7; and in Smith, Talons of the Eagle, 157.

279

The U.S. Army had a new field manual especially tailored to meet the demands of
NSAM 283.

The special forces handbook, FM 100-20, proudly declared that

counterinsurgency had become an integrated part of U.S. foreign and military policy.
The standard field manual for the U.S. Army for nearly two decades, FM 100-20 grew
out of the first counterinsurgency courses taught at Ft. Bragg in 1961. In January 1961,
the staff at the Special Warfare Center took advantage of the U.S. Marines small wars
manual. The army officers at Ft. Bragg for that first class simply replaced the marine
cover with an army cover. Just four years earlier, the U.S. Army Special Operations
Research Office had noted the need for a comprehensive counterguerrilla doctrine but
had failed to mention Latin America in its analysis of historical case studies. In light of
the new importance of counterinsurgency, President Kennedy directed the army to
produce a uniform guide on March 13, 1962 in NSAM 131. It took nearly two years and
twenty versions before the army completed a satisfactory version FM 100-20. And the
army made some important changes to the counterinsurgency manual. To begin with, the
1961 manual, FM 31-21A, argued that while susceptible to communist control and
takeover, the growing unrest in the underdeveloped world stems from purely
nationalistic reasons which support ideals of economic and social advancement. The
final draft of FM 100 emphasized instead the responsibility of the host government since
insurgency is uniquely a local problem. The earlier version stressed that elimination of
the causes of popular unrest compel a complete integration of positive political,
economic, and social aid programs to go along with military operations and aid. FM
100-20 mentioned civic action as one of many military counterinsurgency measures,
280

including military training, combat operations, population control, and

psychological operations. The 1964 draft also dropped the pages of discussion on the
employment of chemical and biological agents in favor of a detailed itemization of the
executive departments and agencies the Departments of Defense and Army in particular
that supervised counterinsurgency within U.S. overseas internal defense rubric. By
1964, however, the urgency that had driven the army to devise its own guidebook shifted
geographically to Southeast Asia. Still, FM 100-20 reflected the institutionalization of
counterinsurgency doctrine into the national security apparatus of the United States.202
The U.S. Army School of the Americas struggled in its usual peripheral role in the
MAP training program despite the continued emphasis on internal security. In an effort
to boost its image, the school wrote in the Army Digest in early 1965 that its students
develop the leadership skills so necessary in furthering the economic and national
development of their respective nations. Along with its new Library of the Americas,
the school continued to emphasize counterinsurgency in all aspects of its training

202

FM 100-20. The designation 20 in FM 100-20 indicates that the twentieth draft was
accepted; Lt. Col. Russell Ramsay, Ret., oral history, 18 March 1998, John B. Amos Library; Department
of the Army, Special Operations Research Office, Project GWR, June 1957, Guerrilla Warfare
Requirements, comp. by William Rossiter, RG 407 Records of the Adjutant Generals Office, 1917-,
Classified Central General Administrative Files, 1955-1962, 1957-1958 Bulky Packages, Box 269, FN AG
370.64 Oct. 21, 1957, 1-129; McGeorge Bundy (Spec. Asst. NSA) to NSC, NSAM 131, 13 Mar. 1962,
Training Objectives for Counter-Insurgency, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Box 32, FN 353, Jan.-Mar.
1962, 1; Department of the Army, field manual, FM 31-21A, 26 Sept. 1961, Guerrilla Warfare and Special
Forces Operations (U), RG 407 Records of the Adjutant Generals Office, 1917-, Classified Central
General Administrative Files, 1955-1962, 1961 Cases, Box 426, FN AG 353 1-1-61, 9; Department of the
Army, field manual, FM 100-20, 28 Jan. 1964, Field Service Regulations Counterinsurgency (U), RG
319 DCSOPS, Class. Corr., 1961-64, Box 3, FN 201-29, 19; Department of the Army, FM 31-21A;
Department of the Army, FM 100-20, 25-30; Department of the Army, FM 31-21A, 34-48; and Department
of the Army, FM 100-20, 13-24. NARA II.

281

including the Basic Medical Technician course. Military intelligence and jungle training
continued to be staples at the U.S. Army School of the Americas through the mid-1960s,
and the school added a full range of airborne training in 1964, including basic airborne,
pathfinder, rigger, and jumpmaster. Amidst the spending of the Vietnam War,
however, the Johnson administration looked to close the school in 1966 to save the army
$3.3 million per year. The Comptroller of the Army cited duplication of effort and
declining enrollment as the primary reasons for the proposed closures, and his office
reported that the language school at Lackland Air Force Base could easily provide
sufficient English language training at no appreciable cost.

With Latin American

support, the U.S. Army School of the Americas managed to keep its doors open. To
bolster enrollment, the school returned to some of the basics from the 1950s when it
added a full range of heavy equipment operator courses.

In 1967, though, heavy

equipment meant civic action grader, crane shovel, water purification, and well drilling.
But the school still struggled to fill the counterinsurgency and jungle training courses in
1967, and the army returned jungle training to Ft. Sherman on April 1, 1968. So the U.S.
Army School of the Americas added correctional administration, physical security,
and military civic action planning courses to the 1968 catalog, stressing coordination
of military civic action programs with civil and government agencies. That same year,
Ft. Gulick offered a noncommissioned officers course on military interrogation for the
first time. The U.S. Army School of the Americas could not emerge from its limited
role because, like Kennedy, President Johnson also preferred to use mobile training teams
to impart counterinsurgency training for internal defense. The Special Action Force of
282

the 8th Special Forces stationed at Ft. Gulick reported in April 1965 that they had a threeyear schedule of MTT missions for every country in the region, and declared that more
than any other United States Government Agency, it had helped Latin America to
remain free . . . from Communism or other totalitarian domination. Ft. Gulick mattered
to President Johnson, but its longest tenant, the School of the Americas, did not.203
Richard Nixon began to lay the groundwork for his Latin American policy on
January 21, 1969. The new president asked Nelson Rockefeller to chair a presidential
commission whose task was to prescribe a new Latin American policy for the nation.
Rockefeller, the son of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, had served as assistant secretary
of state for inter-American affairs under Franklin Roosevelt and had continued to take a
special interest in the region. Rockefeller put together a large, bi-partisan panel to study

203

USARSA, Armies Can Be Builders, Army Digest vol. 20 no. 2 (Feb. 1965), 16-19;
USARSA, The USARSA Catalog, 1964 (USARSA: Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1964), vi. John B. Amos Library;
Medical Committee Report, Technical Department, USARSA, Inclusion #3, Command Historical Program
FY 1967, U.S. Army School of the Americas, File 228.01, HRC 352 Schools -- U.S. Army School of the
Americas, 4-6. CMH. See 1964-1968 catalogs, USARSA, The USARSA Catalog, 1964-68 (USARSA: Ft.
Gulick, C.Z., 1964-8). John B. Amos Library; Lincoln Gordon (Army Comptroller) to U. Alexis Johnson
(Dep. Under Sec. of State), memorandum, 9 June 1966, Draft Report of the General Accounting Office
Recommending the Closing of United States Military Training Schools in the Canal Zone, Enclosure,
Potential Reduction in Training Costs to Be Realized by Training Latin American Personnel under the
Military Assistance Program at United States Armed Forces Schools in the United States Rather than the
Panama Canal Zone, RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File,
1964-66, Box 1702, FN DEF 6-9 US 4/1/66, i and 13. NARA II; Maj. Richard J. Tchon, Maintenance
Committee Report, Technical Department, USARSA, Inclusion #2, Command Historical Program FY
1967, U.S. Army School of the Americas, File 228.01, HRC 352 Schools -- U.S. Army School of the
Americas, 1-2; History, CY 1968, Inclusion #1, U.S. Army School of the Americas, File 228.01, HRC 352
Schools -- U.S. Army School of the Americas, 5. CMH; USARSA, The USARSA Catalog, 1968
(USARSA: Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1968), 52-5, 61-4, and 36-8. John B. Amos Library; Disposition Form,
Inclusion #1, Command Historical Program FY 1967, U.S. Army School of the Americas, File 228.01,
HRC 352 Schools -- U.S. Army School of the Americas, 1. CMH; USARSA, The USARSA Catalog, 1968
(USARSA: Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1968), 27-30. John B. Amos Library; and Col. Arthur D. Simmons (8th SF) to
Maj. Gen. J. D. Alger (CGUSARSO), fact sheet, 14 Apr. 1965, 8th Special Forces Group (Abn), 1st Special
Forces (Special Action Force), RG 319 DCSOPS, Civic Action Files, 1960-65, Box 1, FN 201-36, [12].
NARA II.

283

the current conditions in Latin America. Another wave of authoritarian dictatorships had
taken power in Latin America since 1964. Rockefeller found that Costa Rica was the
only Central American nation with a relatively democratic government. Brazil, Ecuador,
Peru, and Argentina had fallen to military coups and Chile and Uruguay would follow in
short order. Richard Nixon, therefore, had to weigh in on the balance between stability
and democracy in U.S.-Latin American policy. Before Rockefeller delivered his final
report, President Nixon presaged his new policy when he spoke to reporters on July 25,
1969. In what would become known as the Nixon Doctrine, the president informed the
press that the United States could no longer supply the manpower in the battle against
Communism.

His comments referred, of course, to U.S. military commitments in

Southeast Asia.

But the Nixon Doctrine reflected the new presidents desire to

concentrate on big power foreign policy with the Soviet Union and China. Nixon did
not want to get bogged down in what he called the southern tier of the third world.
While the presidents desire to shift some of the military burden of the cold war
represented the first stages of his policy of Vietnamization, the Nixon Doctrine would
have significant repercussions for Latin America.204
Nelson Rockefeller completed his assignment one month later on August 30,
1969. The Rockefeller Report on the Americas portrayed a region in crisis. The Alliance

204

Nelson A. Rockefeller, The Rockefeller Report on the Americas: The Official Report of a
United States Presidential Mission for the Western Hemisphere, intro. by Tad Szulc (Chicago: Quadrangle
Books, 1969), 5; Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 164-5; Robert S.
Litwack, Dtente and the Nixon Doctrine: American Foreign Policy and the Pursuit of Stability, 1969-1976
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); and Raymond L. Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation:
American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington: Brookings Institute, 1985).

284

for Progress, while noble in thought, left unfulfilled expectations.

The continued

staggering birth rate of the past decade meant that before the end of the 1970s more than
one half of Latin Americas population would be less than 19 years of age. And Fidel
Castro hosted the Communist Partys Third Tri-Continental meeting in Havana in 1967.
Cuban subversion had reached historic highs and threatened to ignite this incendiary
situation. To overcome Communisms new threat, Rockefeller offered a grand policy
that met the needs of the entire hemisphere and not just those of the United States, based
on mutual respect and understanding. Rockefeller and his team pointed to the Latin
American military as the primary instrument of positive change for the region. Already,
Rockefeller wrote, the military as an institution had accepted its responsibility to
rescue their nations from the depredations of incompetent politicians. But a new type
of military man is coming to the fore in Latin America, and this new military man is
becoming a major force for constructive change. Rockefeller argued that this new
military man is first and foremost a modernizer, having learned to adapt his authoritarian
tradition to the goals of social and economic progress. Rockefeller proposed that the
United States needed to encourage the Latin American armed forces and accord them the
respect their positions demanded. The United States must, Rockefeller went on, promote
private investment and mutually beneficial trade in order for true economic
development to take place. Nixon disdained foreign economic packages and preferred
private investment. In the 1970s, Latin America witnessed a remarkable era of massive
private investment by the leading U.S. banks that was coordinated by the Nixon
administration.

Perhaps forewarned, Richard Nixon directed the National Security

285

Council on July 9, 1969 to analyze the political future of the military establishments in
Latin America. The NSC remarked that the repeated and aggravated military assaults on
the constitutional process of the past decade were unlikely to change any time soon.
The Latin American military, the presidents national security advisors were told, could
be the agent for economic progress in the region.205
The Rockefeller Report also recommended that the United States make greater
use of the training facility at Ft. Gulick. The U.S. Army School of the Americas sought
to capitalize on the Reports emphasis on the Latin American military as modernizers, but
took care not to seem to compete with the 15 specialized service schools in the United
States. Spanish-language instruction enabled the school to provide courses specifically
for Latin American military. In 1970, the School of the Americas boasted an average
annual attendance of 1,600 students representing all Latin-American nations with the
exception of Costa Rica, Cuba, Haiti, and Mexico.

The school noted that Brazil,

Argentina, and Chile have sophisticated military education systems and do not rely as
heavily on the school as do other countries. Still, the U.S. Army School of the Americas
pointed out in 1970 that its instruction enabled students to impart their newly acquired
skills to fellow nations upon return to their home countries.

205

Venezuelas military

Rockefeller, Rockefeller Report on the Americas, 32-3; and ibid., 75. See Barbara Stallings,
Banker to the World: U.S. Portfolio Investment in Latin America 1900-1986 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1987), for private investment in historical perspective, and the legacy of the 1970s loan
frenzy; William P. Rogers (CIA) to ARA, circular airgram, #CA-6757, 19 Dec. 1969, The Military
Establishments in Latin America, RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Central Foreign Policy Files,
1967-1969, Political and Defense, Box 1570, FN DEF 6 1/1/67 LA, 1, Enclosures. NARA II; George C.
Denney (S/INR) to Secretary of State, memorandum, 28 Aug. 1969, The New Militarism in South
America: Agent for Modernization? RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Central Foreign Policy
Files, 1967-1969, Political and Defense, Box 2287, FN DEF 6 1/1/67 LA, 1-[?]. NARA II.

286

academy, for example, was originally staffed by nearly 100 graduates of the Latin
American Training Center which operated during World War II. Students could bring
back a full range of internal security course work. In addition to a command grade class
and a two-week component for cadets, the School of the Americas offered a four-week
basic internal security course. In it, students received their MAP side arms (.38 caliber
revolver and not a Colt .45 like the U.S. Army), and M14 rifles (not M16), and learned
basic firearms use and maintenance. The class also taught riot control, demolitions,
and tactical and jungle operations, concluding with a two-week visit on the same
rugged course at the Jungle Warfare Center at Ft. Sherman used to train Vietnambound US personnel. The military intelligence class distinguished between internal
security police activities and counterintelligence gathering, using informants and
interrogatory techniques in order to protect against the intelligence efforts of the
enemy. The combat interrogations segment of the course stressed the importance of
using a group of interrogators working in concert playing prisoners against each other.
The 1970 catalog included a photo of a white officer conducting an interrogation of a
black captured enemy, with a ladino taking notes. The United States was teaching the
Latin American military to treat their own citizens as the enemy.206

206

USARSA, US Army School of the Americas, Military Review vol. 40 no. 4 (Apr. 1970), 923; USARSA, The USARSA Catalog, 1970 (USARSA: Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1970), ii; USARSA, US Army
School of the Americas, Military Review, 93; USARSA, USARSA Catalog, 1970, 11-3; USARSA, US
Army School of the Americas, Military Review, 93; USARSA, USARSA Catalog, 1970, 128; ibid., 130;
and ibid., 127. John B. Amos Library.

287

HUMAN RIGHTS
U.S. internal security training facilitated a radical transformation of Latin
American military politics. Every administration since World War II had spoken with
frustration of its efforts to deny the armed services of the region expensive offensive
weaponry. Lyndon Johnson echoed this in NSAM 297 when he insisted that the Defense
Department avoid MAP requests for sophisticated and expensive prestige equipment
unless truly warranted. Rather than representing simple greed for unnecessary modern
military hardware or affronted Latin pride in some juvenile game of territorial
competition, the Latin American military concerned themselves with invasion. While
little intra-continental fighting occurred in the twentieth century, the nineteenth century
had been rife with war from Mexico to the tip of South America. Generations of fighting
had ingrained in Latin American military institutions the necessity of protection against
foreign enemies. By the end of the 1950s, however, the Latin American military had
begun an important transition. The ethos of antipolitics had for decades justified the
militarys place in the political process. Various generals, colonels, and other army
officers (and the occasional admiral), had ousted corrupt and incompetent politicians in
nearly every Latin American country many times by 1960. But the military leaders
viewed these coups as interventions, temporary interruptions until they could find able
and, perhaps, honorable men to assume the daily responsibilities of government. In the
1960s the focus had shifted away from external defense to protection of the fatherland
against Communist subversion. And the role of the military in governing had changed.
As men of enormous pride, the leaders of Latin Americas military bitterly resented the
288

subordinate position imposed by their economies inferiority. They eagerly embraced the
view that they held the key to their nations economic development. The officers who
launched the coups from 1961-1964 and 1968-1973 did so to protect their economic
futures from internal enemies, from Communist-inspired subversion. Moreover, these
were not stopgap measures. The military leaders of countries throughout the region now
saw themselves as the permanent solution to order and progress. They adopted a zerosum posture in a battle for survival and then, to ensure that future, launched brutal and
systematic campaigns of repression. Richard Nixon helped cement this new internal
defense posture in 1973. Taking a page out of Dwight Eisenhowers playbook, Nixon
used the Central Intelligence Agency to facilitate the military overthrow of Chilean
President Salvador Allende in 1973. Allende offered no military challenge to the Chilean
armed forces. But his mildly populist rhetoric could not be tolerated. Gerald Ford
reiterated U.S. support of military intervention in 1976 when he warmly recognized the
Argentina junta that later launched a vicious dirty war on its citizenry by
disappearing thousands of people.207

207

Loveman and Davies, Politics of Antipolitics, 308 advance the argument that U.S. military
training prompted a qualitative shift in the political role of the Latin American military; McGeorge Bundy
(Spec. Asst. NSA) to Dean Rusk (Secretary of State), memorandum, NSAM 297, 22 Apr. 1964, Latin
American Military Aid, RG 59 Records of the Department of State, Records of the Policy Planning
Council (S/PC), 1963-1964, Box 243, FN National Security Action Memos (NSAM), 2. NARA II. For the
nineteenth century legacy of violence, see Lieuwen, Arms and Politics, 17-35; Johnson, Military and
Society, 13-92; and Robert L. Gilmore, Caudillism and Militarism in Venezuela (Athens: Ohio University
Press, 1964). For discussion of the military governments of the 1960s and 1970s, see Loveman and Davies,
Politics of Antipolitics, 308-14; Loveman, La Patria, 160-192, especially 189-191; Frederick Nunn, The
Time of the Generals: Latin American Professional Militarism in World Perspective (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1992); Edward Lieuwen, Generals vs. Presidents: Neo-Militarism in Latin America (New
York: Praeger, 1964); and Lieuwen, Arms and Politics, 122-53, 229-44. See also Begnt Abrahamsson,
Military Professionalization and Political Power (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1972); Victor Alba, El militarismo
(Mexico: UNAM, 1960); Jan Knippers Black, Sentinels of Empire: The United States and Latin American

289

President Jimmy Carter believed that the United States had lost too much ground
in the battle for the Third World because of its unswerving support of dictators. An
openly devout Christian, Carter sought to balance the nations economic and security
needs with a moral imperative. In his inaugural address, the new president declared that
the United States should protect the individual from the arbitrary power of the state.
Our commitment to human rights, he intoned, must become a fundamental tenet of
our foreign policy. The president did not invent the cause of human rights. Instead, he
entered into an ongoing debate and in large part adopted the recommendations of the
Linowitz Report. President Ford had commissioned Sol Linowitz to study military aid to
Latin America, and the final 1976 report openly challenged the utility of supporting
dictatorships simply because they were anti-Communist. The Linowitz Report contended
instead that authoritarian rule in Latin America produced rebellions, and that those rebels
inevitably lumped the United States in with their own brutal tyrants. Increasingly, the
report argued, the United States would be forced to accept losing more countries in the
hemisphere to Communism; or American presidents would have to overtly assist

Militarism (Westport: Greenwood, 1986); Roderick Camp, Generals in the Palacio: The Military in Modern
Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); David Collier, The New Authoritarianism in Latin
America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); Franca Elena Daz Cardona, Fuerzas armadas,
militarismo y constitucin nacional en Amrica latina (Mexico: UNAM, 1988); and Edward Feit, The
Armed Bureaucrats: Military Administration Regimes and Political Development (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1973. On the U.S. in Chile see Ernest Graves and Steven Hildreth, U.S. Security Assistance: The
Political Process (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1985), 22-3; Loveman, La Patria, 187-8; Lars Schoulz,
National Security and United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1987), 245; and Mark T. Gilderhaus, The Second Century: U.S.-Latin American Relations since 1889
(Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2000), 198-202. On Chilean politics see Arturo Valenzuela, The
Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile, ed. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1978); Nathaniel Davis, The Last Two Years of Salvador Allende (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1985); and Max Nolff, Salvador Allende: el poltico, el estadista (Santiago:
Documentas, 1993).

290

repression to maintain anti-Communist states. Congress, too, had participated in the

ongoing human rights debate. After placing more and more restrictions on Military
Assistance Program dollars for the past several years, Congress stepped in with the 1976
International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act. In Sec. 116(a) of the
Foreign Assistance Act, as it was called, Congress prohibited military aid to governments
who displayed a consistent pattern of gross violations to human rights. The lawyers for
the Agency for International Development wrote to the Policy Planning Council in mid
July, 1977 that, according to their reading of the law, the president had broad latitude in
determining whether foreign assistance met the specifications of the act and that the
executive branch is not precluded from imposing more stringent sanctions. When
Congress singled out Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, and Guatemala for human rights
abuses the following spring, the military juntas in each country angrily rejected U.S.
military aid. They felt betrayed. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance convinced the Carter
administration to keep supplying economic aid as incentive for reform. The military in
each country took the money and kept cracking down on their people.208

208

James Earl Carter, Inaugural Address, 20 Jan. 1977. http://jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/

speeches/inaugadd.phtml. See also Lars Schoulz, Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin
America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); Sol Linowitz, The U.S. and Latin America: The
Next Steps (New York: Quadrangle, 1976). See also Sol Linowitz, The Americas in a Changing World
(New York: Commission on U.S.-Latin American Relations, 1975). House Committee on International
Relations, International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act, 1976, 94th Cong., 1st sess.
(Washington: GPO, 1976), 20-2. See John Child, Unequal Alliance: The Inter-American Military System,
1938-1978 (Boulder: Westview, 1980), 208-12 for discussion of MAP restrictions and Congressional
misgivings. Eldon Greenberg (GC/AID) to Alexander Shakow (AA/PPC), memorandum, 18 July 1977,
Human Rights-Interpretation of Section 116 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as Amended, 3.
NSARCH; Child, Unequal Alliance, 211; John H. Coatsworth, Central America and the United States: The
Clients and the Colossus (New York: Twayne, 1994), 135-7; Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The
United States in Central America, 2d rev. ed. (New York: Norton, 1992), 210-2; Coatsworth, Central
America and the United States, 135-6; and LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 210-1.

291

The U.S. Army School languished in obscurity in the 1970s. In turn, attendance
dropped in 1973 to just over 1,100 students, down from the 1600 or more in 1970. The
school received updated military intelligence training materials in March 1973, not
through the usual channels, but from a U.S. Army captain just returned from a brief trip
to the U.S. Army Intelligence School at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona with over one hundred
(100) updated lesson plans that the school quickly incorporated into its curriculum. The
new commandant in 1974, Colonel Charles Bauer, lamented that the senior levels of
the U.S. Army only provided lip service to supporting the school. His predecessor,
Colonel William Nairn, recalled many individualized programs of study the school
designed, like the one-week course in 1971 for members of the Venezuelan general staff.
In 1972, Argentina sent eighty officers for a special internal defense orientation. The
school, however, still promoted the highly important, inherent mission . . . fostering
friendly relations among the Latin American countries represented. By the mid-1970s,
the U.S. Army School of the Americas began to appoint a Latin American officer as subcommandante. In 1977, Lt. Colonel Omar Zelaya filled that role. He recalled that,
regardless of the comments of leftists and Jesuits, the school played an important role
in the preservation of our liberties and the democratic system. The school had to
celebrate relative triumphs. For several years, the U.S. Army School of the Americas
used the neighboring town of Ciricito as its civic action project, called Project 45;
students from the school rebuilt the towns dock every year, held Christmas parties, and
provided some basic medical care on an intermittent basis. In addition, the U.S. Army
School of the Americas welcomed its first female student, Major Margarita Arango of the
292

Panamanian National Guard, in 1972. The next year five Bolivian women attended the
Basic Medical Technician course, which now included 32 hours of internal defense
instruction.209
The school, however, played a sporadic and ever-decreasing part in providing
internal security training to Latin America as the decade wore on. Chile sent an average
of 330 soldiers and officers per year between 1973 and 1975, with a peak enrollment of
479 in 1974, but it sent no students for the remainder of the decade. Over 500 Colombian
military went to Ft. Gulick in 1976 for training, and that country continually had one of
the highest enrollments of all of Latin America. Only Peru sent more students, on
average, to Panama from South America, especially between 1974 and 1977. Panama
and Nicaragua continued to set the pace for the Central American countries, with
Nicaragua nearly tripling (213) its average annual (72.4) total in 1978. In the first thirty
years of operation, no country sent more military to Ft. Gulick than Nicaragua, 4,673.
This was 50 percent higher than the four countries who shared the spot next highest on

209

Historical Summary, CY 1973, Inclusion #5, U.S. Army School of the Americas, File 228.01,
HRC 352 Schools -- U.S. Army School of the Americas, 1; Historical Summary, CY 1972, Inclusion #1,
U.S. Army School of the Americas, File 228.01, HRC 352 Schools -- U.S. Army School of the Americas,
11. CMH; Col. Charles J. Bauer to Capt. James Daniels, letter, Feb. 1998; Col. William Nairn, Ret. to Capt.
James Daniels, letter, Feb. 1998. John B. Amos Library; Historical Summary, CY 1972, Inclusion #1, U.S.
Army School of the Americas, 6; Historical Summary, CY 1974, Inclusion #5, U.S. Army School of the
Americas, File 228.01, HRC 352 Schools -- U.S. Army School of the Americas, 1-5; Preservacin de
nuestras libertades y el sistema democrtico, in letter from Col. Omar Zelaya to Capt. James Daniels,
letter, Feb. 1998. John B. Amos Library; Tchon, Maintenance Committee Report, Inclusion #2, Command
Historical Program FY 1967, 1-2; Medical Committee Report, Technical Department, USARSA, Inclusion
#3, Command Historical Program FY 1967, U.S. Army School of the Americas, 4-6; Historical Summary,
CY 1970, Inclusion #2, U.S. Army School of the Americas, File 228.01, HRC 352 Schools -- U.S. Army
School of the Americas, 6-7; Historical Summary, CY 1971, 8-10; Historical Summary, CY 1972,
Inclusion #1, 6-7; and Historical Summary, CY 1973, Inclusion #5, 5-6; and Historical Summary, CY
1972, Inclusion #1, U.S. Army School of the Americas, 1 and 7; and Historical Summary, CY 1973,
Inclusion #5, U.S. Army School of the Americas, 1. CMH.

293

the list, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, and Bolivia with 3000 or so students.
Unfortunately, the historical record does not indicate what courses students from various
countries attended. But the peak enrollment between 1973 and 1979 of each country
listed above corresponded with heightened domestic tensions within the country in
question. By contrast, only a handful of students (9) from Brazil went to Ft. Gulick for
training between 1973-1976 and, after the special 1972 course, Argentina sent only a
total of forty-seven servicemen. Part of the decline can be traced to Carter administration
policy.

Congress had eliminated training for Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, and

Guatemala in 1977 for human rights standards, and Chile and Uruguay in 1978, and
Paraguay in 1979, also lost their certification. Available course work at the school
underwent significant alterations by 1976. Even before the Congressional action, internal
security had ceased to be a priority at the School of the Americas. By 1976, the internal
defense department was gone and students at Ft. Gulick had found more management
classes. Latin American military attending the School of the Americas could still take
courses in small unit warfare and take part in combined operations with the Jungle
Warfare Center at Ft. Sherman. But the 1977 course catalog had courses in military
intelligence, psychological operations, and jungle warfare lined out, with the notation by
presidential directive.

President Carter eliminated internal security training at the

school. An unusually high number of Nicaraguan National Guard, however, attended the
school in 1978.210

210

Maj. Milton Menjivar, The U.S. Army School of the Americas and Its Impact on U.S.-Latin
American Military Relations in the 1980s, masters thesis, Leavenworth: Command and General Staff

294

Revolution in Central America led Jimmy Carter by 1979 to shift more to the
security-oriented policy of his cold war predecessors. While the president initially sought
to ease Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza Debayle out of office in the hopes of
preventing a FSLN takeover, Carter quickly moved to isolate the Sandinista leadership
after its victory. Unchecked and rampant violence in El Salvador threatened further
instability. Congressional opponents of U.S. support for anti-Communist dictatorships
responded to the growing unrest with new attacks on the Military Assistance Program.
Senator Frank Church, Democratic Chair of the Senate Sub-Committee on InterAmerican Affairs, first attacked the accepted rationale for internal security aid in 1969.
Taking up the fight of Wayne Morse, Church argued that military regimes only
destabilized Latin America. After his trip to Cuba in August 1977, Senator Church
recommended to the full Foreign Relations Committee that the United States needed to
wean Castro away from the Soviet Union, thereby eliminating Cuba as a cipher in
hemispheric insurgency.

In the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Pat

Schroeder attacked the Military Assistance Program and internal security aid and
training. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, she argued that military aid not only
wedded the United States to authoritarian dictators, it left the nation open to being drawn
into another Vietnam in order to protect the security of our erstwhile allies. Carters

College, 1979, 27, Table 2, USARSA Enrollment, 1973-1979; USARSA, The USARSA Catalog, 1980
(USARSA: Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1980), vi. John B. Amos Library; Menjivar, U.S. Army School of the
Americas, Table 2, USARSA Enrollment, 1973-1979, USARSA, The USARSA Catalog, 1976
(USARSA: Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1976), vi; and USARSA, The USARSA Catalog, 1977 (USARSA: Ft. Gulick,
C.Z., 1977). John B. Amos Library.

295

election had led, briefly, to a qualitative shift in the formulation and practice of U.S.
foreign policy that had immediate repercussions for Latin America. But by 1979, Jimmy
Carter was following the realpolitik advice of his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew
Brzezenski. The restive populations in the eastern Caribbean, the growing unrest in El
Salvador, and open Cuban ties to the Nicaraguan revolution, led the human rights activist
to shift back toward the regional security doctrine of the cold war.211
THE NEW COLD WAR
The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 ushered in the New Cold War. Avuncular
and adept at presenting himself on television, President Reagan consciously worked to
restore the perception of the United States both at home and abroad as a world power.
Reagan openly embraced the tried and true anti-Communism of the 1950s and relied on
stark dichotomies of good and evil to forge his foreign policy. He found such a battle in
Central America. The Reagan administration launched the counterattack on Communism
on February 23, 1981 with the State Department White Paper entitled Communist
Interference in El Salvador. The White Paper starkly portrayed the tiny, embattled
nation of El Salvador as but the latest prey of aggressive, expansionistic international

211

See John Booth, The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution (Boulder: Westview,
1982); Robert Pastor, Condemned to Repetition: The United States and Nicaragua (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1987); and James Dunkerly, Power in the Isthmus: A Political History of Modern Central
America (London: Verso, 1988), 221-66. For the American response see Coatsworth, Central America and
the United States, 137-46; LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 162-6, 225-42; and Leonard, Central America
and the United States, 169-74; Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Inter-American Affairs, U.S.
Military Policies in Latin America, 1969, 87th Cong., 2d sess. (Washington: GPO, 1969), 1-8; Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations, Delusion and Reality: The Future of U.S.-Cuba: Report to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee by Frank Church on His Trip to Cuba, Aug. 8-11, 1977, 95th Cong., 1st sess.
(Washington: GPO, 1977); and Pat Schroeder, U.S. Defense: What Can We Afford? (Washington:
American Enterprise Institute, 1980).

296

Communism. Cuban perfidy through its minions in Nicaragua had subverted the genuine
desires of the Salvadoran people. Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas in neighboring
Nicaragua thinly masked their totalitarian intensions with nationalistic and libertarian
rhetoric that did nothing to change the fact that they represented this generations Cuba,
and nothing more. The Reagan administration claimed there were direct ties between
Salvadoran insurgents and Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe. Communism was on the
march to the U.S. border; the Dominos were falling in Central America. The Reagan
administration effectively made policy of the 1980 conservative treatise by the selfproclaimed Committee of Santa Fe. In 1980, five leading southwestern ranchers, and
leaders of the so-called sage brush rebellion, penned a polemic that warned of a
renewed Soviet effort to exploit regional tensions by launching Cuba subversion to
destabilize the region, particularly Central America. Dismissive of critics, who explained
the Marxist-Leninist-Guevarist line of the Salvadoran insurgents as a response to cruel
and brutal military regimes funded and trained by the United States, the president and his
advisors argued that U.S. support of dictatorships preserved the nations security. In this,
the Reagan administration echoed Georgetown professor of political science Jeane J.
Kirkpatrick. Professor Kirkpatrick frankly castigated the Carter administration for what
she characterized as its unrealistic and dangerous sophistry. Kirkpatrick echoed Francis
Adams Truslow, who sternly admonished the Truman administration in 1949:
Totalitarianism we refuse to cooperate with . . . with dictatorships we will. Kirkpatrick
made the same argument, that United States security required support for undemocratic
authoritarian regimes that opposed Communism and continued efforts to oust anti297

democratic totalitarian states that followed the Communist line. President Reagan
found the distinction rather useful, rewarded Jeane Kirkpatrick with the Ambassadorship
to the United Nations, and made anti-Communism in Central America the cornerstone of
his Latin American policy. El Salvador would be the proving ground for the Reagan
presidency; there would be no more Nicaraguas.212
Ronald Reagans El Salvador policy paradoxically originated in the last months of
Jimmy Carters administration. El Salvador had languished under a series of military
governments since 1948. The blatant fraud in the 1977 election that elevated Carlos
Humberto Romero to power, and the repression of opposition that followed, had led
Jimmy Carter to launch his first arms embargo against a Central American dictator.
Carters economic aid, however, failed to persuade the Salvadoran military to implement
any reforms aimed at undercutting rebel support. The resignation of the last in a series of
increasingly repressive military juntas in January 1980 only opened the door to a decade
of civil war and periodic anarchy. In a hideously surreal version of the wild west,
military death squads roamed the country settling scores, including the very public
assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in March 1980. The press in the United
States took notice later that December when four American women, three nuns and a lay

212

Department of State, Special Report No. 80, 23 Feb. 1981, Communist Interference in El
Salvador (Washington: GPO, 1981); Committee of Santa Fe, A New Inter-American Policy for the
Eighties, by Francis Bouchey, Roger Fontaine, David Jordan, Gordon Sumner, and Lewis Tambs, 1980;
Francis Adams Truslow, Study Group Reports, Inter-American Affairs, 7 Feb. 1949, Report of Groups,
vol. XVI-D, Council on Foreign Relations, New York City, quoted in LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions,
105; and Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics
(New York: Touchstone, 1982). The core argument was originally published in Jeane J. Kirkpatrick,
Dictatorships and Double Standards, Commentary vol. 68 no. 3 (Nov. 1979), 34-45.

298

worker, were raped and murdered by members of another military death squad. The
Carter administration suspended economic aid from the United States. The end of 1980,
however, witnessed the union of several disparate guerrilla groups under the rubric the
Farabundo Mart National Liberation Front, which launched a poorly conceived final
offensive in the first days of 1981. In the last days of his presidency, Carter resumed
economic and military aid to the Salvadoran military. Ronald Reagan stepped that up
significantly in March. The failed offensive also galvanized the El Salvadoran military.
Beginning in December 1981, members of the Salvadoran Atlacatl Battalion began a
systematic annihilation of entire villages and towns in the northern half of the Morazan
province. An elite, U.S.-trained force, the Atlacatl Battalion sought to wipe the area
clean, limpieza, in a scorched-earth policy in which the mass slaughter of civilians
became de rigueur. The most notorious attack occurred in and around the town of El
Mozote where, among other atrocities, soldiers filled a convent with over 150 children
under the age of twelve and executed them with their U.S.-issued M16 rifles. The
Reagan administration insistently claimed that the reports of massacres were just rebel
propaganda and blamed the FMLN for any civilian deaths. Despite their initial success in
denying a connection between U.S. counterinsurgency training and any atrocities
committee by the Salvadoran army, the fighting in El Salvador brought the U.S. Army
School of the Americas into the center of U.S. foreign policy for the first time.213

213

Marvin Gettleman, et al., eds., El Salvador: Central America in the New Cold War (New York:
Grove Press, 1981), has compiled a thorough survey of published documents that frame U.S. policy toward
the violence in El Salvador up to 1981. For a look at the socio-economic roots of resistance in El Salvador,
see Liisa North, Bitter Grounds: Roots of Revolt in El Salvador 2d ed. (Westport: Lawrence Hill, 1989);

299

The war in El Salvador catapulted the U.S. Army School of the Americas onto the
front lines in the battle to contain Communism in Central America. Prior to 1980, El
Salvador was simply one of the many countries that had availed themselves of the
training offered at Ft. Gulick, sending less than one-fourth (1,116) of the number of
military students that Nicaragua (4,653) sent to Panama. Four South American countries
Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia had sent more than 3,000 students to the school
in its first thirty-five years.

That all changed in 1981.

Five hundred sixty-five

Salvadoran military trained at Ft. Gulick. That figure represents the single greatest oneyear enrollment increase in the history of the school.

Most were members of an

experimental rapid response unit, the Atlacatl Battalion. The Battalion officially received
training through the Jungle Warfare Center at Ft. Sherman under the direction of the 8th
Special Forces stationed at Ft. Gulick, but it attended classes at the School of the
Americas as well. In 1982, another 587 Salvadoran military went through the schools
doors and in 1983 762 soldiers and officers. Each years total set a new record. The
Salvadoran military struggled mightily in the fight against the FMLN between 19821984, and the training provided by the school helped the army to survive those critical
years. The persistent targeting of civilian populations by elements of the El Salvadoran

James Dunkerly, The Long War: Dictatorship and Revolution in El Salvador (London: Verso, 1981),
provides a sympathetic and detailed look at the rebellion while Michael T. Klare and Cynthia Arnson,
Supplying Repression: U.S. Support of Authoritarian Regimes Abroad, foreword Richard Falk
(Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1981), place El Salvador within the context of the Military
Assistance Program. See also Loveman, La Patria, 192-202, for discussion of military rule; and
Coatsworth, Central American and the United States, 146-57. See Mark Danner, The Massacre at El
Mozote (New York: Vintage, 1994). [1993].

300

military, however, continued to outrage observers and a few American reporters. In turn,
Reagan and his staff borrowed their lines from the El Salvadoran officer corps: nothing
happened. The Reagan administration publicly acknowledged the troubled past of the
Salvadoran military, but argued that U.S. training had raised them above that violence.
Instead, the United States contended that any civilian deaths, while lamentable, came at
the hands of the Marxist-Leninist rebels who sought to throw the onus onto the liberating
El Salvadoran Army.

Media accounts to the contrary were at best irresponsible

assistance to the Communist propaganda machine.

But Protestant churches, labor

organizers, human rights groups, and the Catholic Church provided a wide array of
evidence that the El Salvadoran military had not improved their human rights record, but
had only developed better tactics to kill their own people. The increasing disconnect
between the U.S. governments version of events and the growing evidence of human
rights violations throughout the El Salvador forced Ronald Reagan to find some political
ammunition to carry on the fight against Communism in Central America.214
The Presidents National Bipartisan Commission declared that United States
security called for a sustained commitment to the cause of democracy in Central
America. On July 19, 1983, Ronald Reagan formed a blue-ribbon panel of his own, led
by Richard Nixons national security advisor, Henry Kissinger. Kissinger had managed
to escape the Watergate scandal relatively unscathed, and he had developed in the
intervening years a certain cach among conservatives as someone who understood

214

USARSA, The USARSA Catalog, 1981 (USARSA: Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1981), 52. John B. Amos
Library; ibid., 6; and Capt. John Paul Jones, oral history, 17 Mar. 1998. John B. Amos Library.

301

Communism. President Reagan expected the Kissinger Commission, as it was soon

dubbed, to sanction his expanding Central American policy and provide the political
momentum to expand U.S. involvement in Central America. Kissinger turned in the
report that quickly bore his name on January 10, 1984. The Kissinger Commission
harkened back to the Rockefeller report of fifteen years earlier, arguing that
underdevelopment and not repressive military rule was the proximate cause for
regional instability. The president had already rejected a give away program like the
Alliance for Progress. Instead, as with the Nixon administration, Reagan wanted to
encourage private investment in the region. The Commission, therefore, reiterated the
tenets of the Caribbean Basin Initiative begun in January 1982. Here, the United States
offered selective economic aid, usually loans from the Inter-American Development
Bank and the World Bank, as a carrot to Caribbean nations that implemented the strict
monetarist reforms his administration believed would promote American economic
interests while stimulating economic development. The Commission wanted to extend
that program to Central America.

A renewed Communist campaign in the region,

however, sought to exploit genuine desires for reform and threatened regional security.
And only with security, the Kissinger Commission went on, could democracy emerge.
The United States, the Commission concluded, required multiyear funding to marshal
the necessary resources and afford the region the time it needed to promote human rights
and economic development simultaneously. The United States, therefore, needed to
embrace a long-term plan to promote the stability and security essential for economic
development. While the Kissinger Commission reiterated the essence and particulars of
302

the existing strategy toward the region, the development language softened the rhetorical
edge of the Reagan administrations Central American policy.215
The Kissinger Commission reinforced the importance of counterinsurgency
training for El Salvador. The U.S. Army School of the Americas had by 1984 become an
important cog in the war against Communism in El Salvador. The facilities at Ft. Gulick
had been allowed to deteriorate between 1979 and 1981 when the schools future seemed
in jeopardy. But after two years of physical improvements, the school readied for the
coming school year with a full slate of courses reminiscent of 1962. In addition to the
management courses that were a staple during the 1970s, the School of the Americas
offered classes in military intelligence and psychological operations. Ranger training
offerings increased along with a class in basic auto repair. The school also continued to
expand its relationship with El Salvador, offering several leadership courses for junior
officers and noncommissioned officers and three classes for cadets. The school even set
up an officers candidate class for likely Salvadoran soldiers. Despite the growing ties to
the fighting in Central America, and to El Salvador in particular, Commandant Nicholas
Andreacchio dismissed his schools importance outside of Panama given the U.S. Armys
disdain for the facility as a whole. Colonel Andrecchio was undoubtedly correct in his
assessment of the relative place of the School of the Americas within the training and
doctrine command of the United States Army. But he served as commandant between

215

Report of the Presidents National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, foreword

Henry Kissinger (New York: MacMillan, 1984); Coatsworth, Central America and the United States, 167;
and Presidents National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, 122.

303

1982 and 1984 when the school became an important counterinsurgency center for the
Salvadoran Army. The cadet, OCS, and leadership courses all finished with a twoweek training run through the Jungle Warfare Center. The military intelligence and
psychological operations students also took part in the U.S. Army Ranger gauntlet. The
School of the Americas gave the Salvadoran military the training necessary to project
their forces into remote areas with unprecedented expertise as well as a new esprit. With
congressional

opposition

to

counterinsurgency

training

growing,

the

Reagan

administration found the School of the Americas a useful means to promote security in El
Salvador.216
The future of counterinsurgency training at Ft. Gulick, however, fell prey to
politics. Conflict with the Panamanian government meant the end of the school in the
Canal Zone. As part of the Carter-Torrijos Treaty of 1977, the United States agreed to
gradually return control of the military bases in the zone to Panama. Ft. Gulicks lease
was up in 1984. The negotiations began in 1983, but the State Department alienated
Panamas president, who then insisted that his nations flag fly above the school and that
the United States Army take orders from Latin American officer as commandant. As a
result, the U.S. Army decided to move the school to Ft. Benning, Georgia, the new home
of the U.S. Southern Command. The move increased the prestige of the school in the
eyes of Latin American students because of its new location within the United States and

216

USARSA, The USARSA Catalog, 1984 (USARSA: Ft. Gulick, C.Z., 1984), 23 and 73; ibid.,
24; ibid., 74; ibid., 62-6; and Col. Nicholas Andreacchio to Capt. James Daniels, letter, Feb. 1998, 2. John
B. Amos Library.

304

on the same base as the infantry school, but it also meant that the cost of attendance
increased as well. The transfer to Georgia only delayed classes for three months, and the
School of the Americas continued to build its ties to El Salvador. By 1990, 6,207
members of the Salvadoran Army had studied at the U.S. Army School of the Americas.
The school continued to offer several classes for El Salvadoran cadets into the early
1990s, along with the OCS course. The School of the Americas, however, had witnessed
important changes by 1990. The school shifted its training emphasis away from Central
America. Violetta Chamorro defeated Danial Ortega as President of Nicaragua, and the
guerrillas in El Salvador entered into negotiations with the Salvadoran military that
would end the fighting in that ravaged country. The school then became an important
clearinghouse for Colombian troops.

For the next several years, the School of the

Americas made special provisions for Colombian cadet courses as more than 2,000
Colombian soldiers and officers went to Ft. Benning in the 1990s.

The Bush

administration was concerned with instability caused by drug cartels in Colombia. The
drug war had come to the U.S. Army School of the Americas.217

217

See Walter LaFeber, The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective, updated version
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 125-87 for discussion of the treaty negotiations and
ratification, and 193-98 for the events of 1983-4; and Michael L. Conniff, Panama and the United States:
The Forced Alliance (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), 128-39, and 150 for the handover of Ft.
Gulick; Andreacchio to Daniels, Feb. 1998, 4. John B. Amos Library. Christopher Dickey, U.S. Prizes Its
School for Latin American Military, Washington Post, 23 May 1983, p. A16, col. 1; Ramsay, oral history;
Col. Cecil Himes to Capt. James Daniels, letter, Feb. 1998, 3; and Andreacchio to Daniels, Feb. 1998, 4.
See 1986-1992 catalogs, USARSA, The U.S. Army School of the Americas Catalog, 1986-92 (USARSA:
Ft. Benning, Georgia, 1986-1992). John B. Amos Library. Coatsworth, Central America and the United
States, 196-203; and Leonard, Central America, 192-5. And see 1988-1996 catalogs, USARSA, The U.S.
Army School of the Americas Catalog, 1988-96 (USARSA: Ft. Benning, Georgia, 1988-1996); and
USARSA, The U.S. Army School of the Americas Catalog, 1997 (USARSA: Ft. Benning, Georgia, 1997),
8. John B. Amos Library.

305

THE SCHOOL OF ASSASSINS

The U.S. Army School of the Americas had to confront the legacy of its 1980s
training just as its mission began to evolve once again. The school reformulated its
curriculum for 1991, forming a new Special Operations/Low intensity Conflict section.
As the fighting in Central America began to wane in 1987 and 1988, the United States
turned its attention to a new counternarcotics assault. Latin American military took
courses in military intelligence and psychological operations, and the school
arranged commando training with the U.S. Army Rangers at Ft. Benning. Later that
year, the U.S. Army made arrangements for training with the helicopter school at Ft.
Rucker, Alabama, which enabled the School of the Americas to offer another new
section, the Helicopter School Battalion.

Along with new courses in computers,

advanced military intelligence, and sniper, the school for the first time in October
1990 touted its training and education programs [which] . . . systematically advocate
human rights awareness. But the world had begun in 1990 to reexamine the fighting
that had occurred in El Salvador during the 1980s.

The United Nations Truth

Commission revealed that the overwhelming majority of the Salvadoran Army officers
who committed a continuous series of war crimes over more than a decade of civil war
had received training at the School of the Americas. The United States had denied for
years that the search-and-destroy operations that culminated in Morazn in late 1981 and
early 1982 had ever occurred. In March 1990, the Bush administration continued to deny
that the U.S. officers who trained the Immediate Reaction Battalions (BIRI), of which the
Atlacatl was one, played any role in any operations, as it sought to diminish the
306

significance of training the Salvadoran Army did receive from the United States. But
every El Salvadoran cadet class from 1970-1977 and 1980-1990 graduated from the U.S.
Army School of the Americas. MTTs assigned to El Salvador established and staffed the
counterinsurgency programs in San Salvador that worked with each of the five BIRIs.
The special forces units assigned to the MTTs in El Salvador made use of the facilities at
Ft. Sherman and at Ft. Gulick. Still, no direct evidence has been uncovered that U.S.
Army officers accompanied the Salvadoran Armys cleansing campaigns. But it is clear
that the Salvadoran military conceived, planned, and executed those operations using the
tactics, weapons, and intelligence techniques provided by the Military Assistance
Program, much of it supplied by the School of the Americas. Human rights activists who
opposed U.S. military training because of the terrible costs to Central America gained the
support of Congressman Joseph Kennedy and launched a movement to close the School
of Assassins.218

218

USARSA, The U.S. Army School of the Americas Catalog, 1991 (USARSA: Ft. Benning,
Georgia, 1991), 37-58; ibid., 49; and ibid., 39-45. General Accounting Office, Report to the Ranking
Minority Member, House Committee on National Security, GAO/NSIAD-96-178, 22 Aug. 1996, School of
the Americas: U.S. Military Training for Latin American Countries, 20. http://purl.access.gpo.gov/gpo/
lps30003; and USARSA, The U.S. Army School of the Americas Catalog, 1992 (USARSA: Ft. Benning,
Georgia, 1992), 69-90; USARSA, The U.S. Army School of the Americas Catalog, 1993 (USARSA: Ft.
Benning, Georgia, 1993), 33-4; USARSA, The U.S. Army School of the Americas Catalog, 1992
(USARSA: Ft. Benning, Georgia, 1992), 38 and 56; USARSA, The U.S. Army School of the Americas
Catalog, 1991 (USARSA: Ft. Benning, Georgia, 1991), iii. John B. Amos Library. Danner, El Mozote,
155-62; and Jack Nelson-Palmeyer, School of Assassins (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 18-36. Col. Milton
R. Menjivar to Sec. of Defense, memorandum, 20 Mar. 1990, Congressional Inquiry -- Atlacatl Training,
Rec. No. 634, El Salvador: War, Peace, and Human Rights, 1980-1994, [Microfilm #00514], 1; Antonio
J. Ramos, memorandum, 25 June 1993, Congressional Inquiry Regarding U.S. Training of the Atlacatl
Battalion, OCLL #3051549, El Salvador: War, Peace, and Human Rights, 1980-1994, [Microfilm
#00611], 1. National Security Archive. See School of Americas video; Nelson-Palmeyer, School of
Assassins; and School of the Americas Watch at http://www.soawatch.org.

307

The effort to close the school gained more ammunition with the clandestine
release of the School of the Americass counterinsurgency manuals. In 1982, the U.S.
Army instructed the School of the Americas to resume the military intelligence
instruction that President Carter cancelled in 1977. Major Victor Tise, an instructor at Ft.
Gulick, reclaimed the schools 1970s Spanish-language materials from the U.S. Army
Intelligence School at Ft. Huachuca. There, the major also encountered Project X, a
classified effort to adapt the lessons learned in the Phoenix program in Vietnam to the
fighting in Central America. Major Tise noted, however, that much of the Project X
material came word-for-word from FM 30-18, the U.S. Army Intelligence field
manual. The major combined materials from Project X with the older USARSA program
to compile 382 lesson plans. The School of the Americas then sent the material to the
Joint Chiefs for approval.

The materials were returned unchanged and marked

approved by the deputy chief of staff of operations. For the next several years, the
School of the Americas used the manuals developed by Major Tise in its military
intelligence and psychological operations courses. In 1991, a former instructor at the
school released to the public copies of the seven manuals that had been in use for nearly a
decade at the School of the Americas. The seven manuals covered: handling of sources;
counterintelligence; analysis; revolutionary war, guerrilla and communist ideology;
terrorism and the urban guerrilla; interrogation; and combat intelligence. The manuals
themselves in the main read like a human resources handbook from a management
seminar. But controversy quickly erupted over what the Department of Defense deemed
objectionable material inconsistent with current doctrine. The most dramatic problem
308

arose in volume one, handling of sources, which refers to motivation by fear, payment
of bounties for enemy dead, beatings, false imprisonment, executions, and the use of truth
serum. In a March 1992 report approved by Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, the
assistant secretary for intelligence oversight blasted the School of the Americas for not
following established procedure by gaining approval for the military intelligence courses
from Ft. Huachuca, and for assuming that the out-of-date materials gleaned in 1982 fit
current doctrine. Cheney then removed the manuals for failing to meet current doctrine.
The secretary openly worried that some Latin American soldiers might get the wrong
idea from such dated material.219
The battle to close the School of the Americas continued throughout the 1990s.
The School of the Americas, reluctantly, began to incorporate human rights into its
curriculum by the mid-1990s to conform with emerging U.S. policy. In May 1997, the
Clinton administration released a new national security strategy for a new century. The
document argued that, with the cold war over and the interconnections of the global
economy drawing nations closer, the United States needed a national security policy that
acknowledged the dynamism of the new world order. Bill Clinton argued that the
United States needed to promote sustainable development to eliminate the underlying

219

Maj. Thomas R. Husband (ADD/CI) to Deputy Assistant Sec. of Defense, memorandum, 31

July 1991, USSOUTHCOM CI Training Supplemental Information (U), 1-2. Doc. 4, National Security
Archive Electronic Briefing Book, No. 122, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarch/nsaebb/nsaebb122/#southcom;
National Security Archive, DOD Manuals, Survey of Objectionable and Questionable Passages,
http://www.gwo.edu/nsarchiv/nsa/archive/news/dodmans.htm; Werner E. Michel (ASD/IO) to Richard
Cheney (Sec. of Def.), memorandum, 10 Mar. 1992, Improper Material in Spanish-Language Intelligence
Training Manuals, 2-3. Doc. 3, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, No. 122,
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarch/nsaebb/nsaebb122/#southcom.

309

pressures that bred terrorism and drug trafficking. In the Western Hemisphere, Clinton
believed that the United States looked forward to an unprecedented opportunity to build
a future of stability and prosperity with nations that were largely democratic and
committed to free market economies. The new policy fit with the legislatures plans. In
1987, a frustrated Congress had revamped the funding mechanism for U.S. military
training of foreign nationals, adding the International Military Education and Training
Act in 1987. The legislation required the Secretary of Defense to put on record his
reasoning for providing internal security training. The act was modified in 1990 to
ensure that training promoted civilian ascendancy in civil-military relations. For decades,
the U.S. Army School of the Americas had included in counterinsurgency courses
lectures on democracy, democratic institutions, and the relationship between the civil
authorities and the military. But these were cold war lectures designed to serve as a
counterpoint to Communist ideology. The school finally began in the mid 1990s to
confront civil-military relations more directly. In 1994, the School of the Americas
changed the Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict section to the Special
Operations/Civil-Military Operations section. And in 1996, the school added a class on
democratic sustainment. The school did not deliberately incorporate human rights into
the curriculum until 1997, when it held with a train-the-trainer human rights course
designed to provide Latin American military with their own human rights instructors.

310

The attacks against the School of the Americas, however, continued. Congress decided
to make a change.220
The U.S. Army School of the Americas closed its doors on December 15, 2000.
Citing the changing needs of the twenty-first century, the secretary of defense deemed
that the institution that had trained more than 60,000 Latin American military had served
its purpose. But that was not the end of U.S. military training for Latin Americans at Ft.
Benning. More than a month earlier, on October 30, 2000, Bill Clinton signed into law
the National Defense Authorization Act. Section 2166 of the Act authorized the secretary
of defense and not the U.S. Army to establish an institution to train military from
qualified Western Hemisphere nations. Only countries with no continuing human rights
abuses could attend and, as a matter of policy, the school screens individual applicants.
The new Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation opened its doors on
January 17, 2001 to promote peace and human welfare. To coordinate training at
WHINSec, as it is called, the deputy secretary of defense established in July 2002 a
visitors board, comprised of the ranking members of the House and Senate Armed
Services Committees, the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, the
Commanding General of the U.S. Southern Command, the Commanding General of
Training and Doctrine, and six members of various non-governmental organizations.

220

President Clinton, May 1997, A National Security Strategy for a New Century, 1; ibid., 1819; ibid., 24; General Accounting Office, School of the Americas: U.S. Military Training for Latin
American Countries, 9, n. 11; USARSA, The U.S. Army School of the Americas Catalog, 1994 (USARSA:
Ft. Benning, Georgia, 1994), 47-68; USARSA, The U.S. Army School of the Americas Catalog, 1996
(USARSA: Ft. Benning, Georgia, 1996), 36; USARSA, The U.S. Army School of the Americas Catalog,
1997 (USARSA: Ft. Benning, Georgia, 1997), 48. John B. Amos Library.

311

Section 5.1.3.1 of the new charter compels the institute to include eight hours of
mandatory instruction on human rights for each class offered. WHINSec now declares
that it offers courses for military, police, and civilian officers from Latin America. But
the new course catalog looks nearly identical to the last School of the Americas catalog,
with one new addition: peace keeping. As in the 1990s, students at WHINSec can take
classes in civil-military operations and human rights instructor. The institute still
offers a full range of cadet courses as well as a democratic sustainment class. The
Helicopter Battalion School is gone and so are special operations. Now, U.S. Army
Mobile Training Teams go to the institute to receive training in intelligence officer,
counter drug, and counter-narco-terrorism information officer. Very much like its
predecessors, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation seeks to
emphasize the ability of training to build inter-American relationships and to promote
democratic values and respect for human rights. The Latin American training facility
at Ft. Benning, however, does have a new motto: paz, libertad, y fraternidad.221

221

USARSA Furls Flag, Closes Half-Century Chapter of Engagement in Hemisphere,

USARSA, Main, http://carlilse-www.army.mil/usamhi/usarsa/main.htm; WHINSec, About the Institute,
About the Institute, http://www.benning.army.mil/whinsec; WHINSec, About the Institute, FAQ, Why
WHINSec, http://www.benning.army.mil/whinsec; WHINSec, Home page, http://www.benning.army.
mil/whinsec; Paul Wolfowitz (Dep. Sec. of Def.), DOD Directive, 5111.12, 17 June 2007, Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation Charter, WHINSec, About the Institute, Charter,
http://www.benning.army.mil/whinsec; WHINSec, Academics, http://www.benning.army.mil/whinsec;
WHINSec, Academics, Course Catalog, http://www.benning.army.mil/whinsec; WHINSec, About the

312

Conclusion
The United States began training Latin American military in the Panama Canal
Zone in 1939. By the end of World War II, what had begun as a series of informal
courtesy visits proved especially popular in Latin American military circles. The United
States decided to formalize that training in 1949 when the new Caribbean Command
established the USARCARIB School at Ft. Gulick on the eastern edge of the Canal Zone.
Located on a base named after a retiring general who began his career in World War I on
a military mission to Chile, the USARCARIB School quickly sought to establish its own
identity within the U.S. Armys training system. By 1956, all instruction at Ft. Gulick
was conducted in Spanish as successive commandants tried to attract more Latin
American military students to the school. Time and again, however, the U.S. Army
thwarted the schools efforts to expand its training beyond radio repair, heavy equipment
operation, and cadet infantry classes. Dwight Eisenhower gave Latin America a limited
role in maintaining hemispheric defense, which in practice meant U.S. control of the
Panama Canal and the shipping lanes of the Caribbean. He did not wish to spend more
money than necessary on peoples he did not trust in a comfortably secure region. Fidel
Castro changed all that. The USARCARIB School took advantage of official uncertainty
about the Cuban Revolution by introducing counterinsurgency training at Ft. Gulick. The
school utilized the U.S. Army Ranger Jungle Warfare School across the Canal at Ft.

Institute, FAQ, Why WHINSec, http://www.benning.army.mil/whinsec; and WHINSec, Home page,

http://www.benning.army.mil/whinsec.

313

Sherman. And although instructors from Ft. Gulick taught the first counterinsurgency
courses for Latin American military at President Kennedys favored Special Warfare
Center at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina in January 1961, the USARCARIB School quickly
faded into relative obscurity, as the president and the U.S. Army preferred to use Mobile
Training Teams from the 8th Special Forces, which was also headquartered at Ft. Gulick.
When the Kennedy administration renamed the facility at Ft. Gulick the U.S. Army
School of the Americas on July 1, 1963, the president was trying to fill the empty
classrooms at the school. After 1961, however, training at the U.S. Army School of the
Americas became entwined in evolving notions of development.
The Kennedy administration introduced the concept of underdevelopment to
explain the relative economic inferiority of the non-western world. The men and women
who carried out the will of successive presidential administrations accepted, usually
uncritically, the assumptions of development, that traditional societies, weighed down by
primitive cultural baggage and reluctant to give up the ways of the grandfathers, were in
(desperate) need of an injection of modernity. Walt Rostow convinced the president that
aid programs could stimulate the requisite conditions for economic development while
counterinsurgency training would provide developing economies with the internal
security necessary to ease them through the difficult transition period and stymie
predatory Communist subversion. The course and content of policy has shifted and the
style with which it manifested over time has moderated with each passing presidency.
President Lyndon Johnsons staff tried to kill development spending; Nixon believed
private money was the answer. Jimmy Carter tried to insist, briefly, that development
314

had to mean democracy as well. President Reagan forcibly sought to recreate the 1950s
sense of consensus and urgency, so he used military intervention to make it happen.
Democracy and development could happen later.

George Bush went back to the

philosophy of Richard Nixon. And Bill Clinton embraced the quest for the open door
with a vengeance. The concept of the development process has morphed over time into
sustainable development, and the language of development has become more
politically correct, with the dropping of primitive and traditional from the lexicon.
But the United States has not abandoned the fundamental assumption that development is
a natural outgrowth of human progress over time. Development, in this view, is history.
So the debate has been framed by how to promote development. And for a combination
of security and economic reasons, the United States has sought to encourage development
in Latin America ever since John. F. Kennedy assumed office.
The U.S. Army School of the Americas consistently portrayed its training as an
opportunity for Latin American military to learn how to promote development in their
own countries.

Latin American military training ostensibly served to advance

development policy in the years after 1961. With the notable exception of El Salvador in
the early 1980s, however, the school played a deliberately limited role. Both the Johnson
and Nixon administrations wanted the internal security that counterinsurgency aid and
training provided Latin American nations, but the School of the Americas was an everdiminishing part of hemispheric military policy during the 1960s and 1970s. These
presidents preferred the flexibility afforded by MTTs. Under Jimmy Carter, the United
States reconsidered the utility of giving arms and instruction to staunchly anti315

Communist but decidedly undemocratic regimes. Trying to balance stability and security
with democracy, Carter ordered an end to counterinsurgency training at the School of the
Americas. Increasingly frustrated by the human cost of U.S. counterinsurgency policy,
Congress almost succeeded in closing the school in 1979. The rise of popular revolution
in Central America at the end of the 1970s, however, led President Carter to hold on to
Ft. Gulick. U.S. policy included the sustained participation of the U.S. Army School of
the Americas for the first time under Ronald Reagan. During the 1980s, the school
provided a significant part of the counterinsurgency and intelligence training that enabled
the Salvadoran Army to survive its civil war. Throughout its history, the U.S. Army has
never thought highly of the USARCARIB School, the U.S. Army School of the
Americas, or its current incarnation, the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security
Cooperation, and has consciously relegated it to a position of decidedly minor
significance.

When religious groups, human rights activists, and former instructors

organized in the 1990s to shut down the School of Assassins, it was the White House
that saved the school by redefining its mission once again so that it could continue to
serve the interests of hemispheric security and development.
Critics of the School of the Americas charge that the sins of the past militate
against any future value of U.S. military training programs at Ft. Benning. They argue
that the school deliberately taught future dictators and assassins the tools of their trade.
Successive presidential administrations since the beginning of World War II have used
the training of Latin American armed services to ensure economic and political stability
in the Western Hemisphere. The United States correctly identified the Latin American
316

military as the primary power brokers within their societies and made a point of forging
close relations with the actual officers themselves. Routinely, from the 1930s to the
present, the U.S. Army has touted the Military Assistance Program because it afforded
U.S. armed services the opportunity to impart U.S. military doctrine, anti-Communist
ideology, and Western culture to their Latin American students. From Eisenhower and
hemispheric defense to Bill Clinton and the open door policy, the U.S. Army harped on
the future political importance of Latin American officers in their respective countries
political sphere, and on the salutary effect of U.S. military expertise. The commandants
at Ft. Gulick and at Ft. Benning over the decades certainly promoted the instruction
offered at the school as serving this purpose.
But it is important to recall the differential impact of the school on Latin America,
both chronologically and geographically. The U.S. Army preferred using its missions,
MAAGs and MTTs to impart specialized training in host countries.

Successive

presidents reinforced that policy. Many countries, notably Mexico, Argentina, Brazil,
Chile, and Uruguay, had their own respected military institutions of higher learning.
They disdained assignments to Panama. All the nations of the region preferred training at
the more prestigious military schools in the United States. Even in the case of Colombia,
whose affiliation with the school goes back to the 1940s, courses at Ft. Gulick and Ft.
Benning only served to reinforce U.S. military assistance to that country.

The

counterinsurgency instruction provided by the U.S. Army School of the Americas

represented a small and only occasionally important part of U.S. military policy training.

317

Perhaps more important, the critics of the school run the risk of patronizing the Latin
American military in much the same way that United States policymakers have done.
The Latin American military were not credulous children in this process. They
gratefully accepted the materiel the Military Assistance Program provided and asked for
more. With rare exception they could foresee no external foe, and both Latin American
military leaders and the United States understood that military aid and training would be
used for internal security. Moreover, they counted on it. They sought U.S. training, with
even greater fervor than American policymakers offered it. And the Latin American
military did not randomly select the men who were chosen to benefit from the expertise
of the armed services that won World War II. In general, only officers favored within the
patronage systems of their countrys military received the opportunity to train with the
U.S. armed services, preferably in the United States. So it should not be surprising that
many Latin American military trained in or by the United States emerged later as key
participants in military action and political rule within their own countries. U.S. training
certainly helped more than it hurt their standing within their armed services, and the
counterinsurgency techniques they learned certainly helped them politically and
militarily. Predisposed to distrust civilian politicians, and virulently anti-Communist
themselves, the soldiers and officers of the regions armed services took the words of
advice from the worlds most powerful military to heart and placed themselves in charge
in country after country during the 1960s and 1970s. Latin Americas military embraced
counterinsurgency tactics because they recognized that counterintelligence, psychological
warfare, and special operations training would enable them to complete their primary
318

mission, defense of the fatherland. United States military training did fundamentally alter
the perceived mission of the Latin American military, and the people of the region
experienced prolonged repression as a result. But the Latin American armed forces did
not need the United States to teach them how to oppress their own people. Nevertheless,
American policymakers did give them what they believed was a better reason to do so.
The United States knew the long history of intervention by Latin American
military men into their domestic politics. The Latin American military were chosen
because a succession of United States presidents and their administrations believed that
they were the only ones in their societies capable of maintaining order. And both before
or after Kennedy, the United States wanted stability and security in Latin America during
the cold war so that it could focus on more pressing battlegrounds in Europe, Southeast
Asia, and the nuclear arms race. During those years, the United States advanced its case
arguing that the Soviet Union represented the forces of totalitarianism, a way of life
inimical to free peoples everywhere. With great and understandable pride, Americans
celebrated the defeat of the forces of aggression in World War II. After the war, the
United States leapt into the international arena convinced that American expertise, drive,
and sacrifice could solve any problem and equally convinced it had the God-given
responsibility to contain the spread of aggressive and expansionistic Communism. In this
fight, American policymakers did not care about the consequences of anti-democratic
rule in the underdeveloped world; they worried about the ramifications of Communist
subversion. The decision to oppose Communism at any cost has been explained simply
as a product of tough choices by tough men in tough times, or the inevitable outgrowth of
319

modern, industrial capitalism in a never-ending search for markets. But it is more than
that. Within the east/west orientation of the cold war, the United States relied on its
older, western orientation to treat with the non-white peoples of the world.
Racial paternalism directed the American decision to let anti-Communist dictators
hold sway in their countries during the cold war. It may be axiomatic to be sure, but it is
worth repeating that the ideas, attitudes, and notions of a people are reflected in the
conduct of their foreign relations. The decision to embrace dictatorship in Latin America
drew upon the lessons learned in western expansion through the seventeenth, eighteenth,
and nineteenth centuries and mirrored United States policy toward the rest of the nonWestern European world. As a matter of course during the cold war the United States
reduced the complex historical contexts of the worlds non-white peoples to caricatures
predicated on generations-old notions of race and patriarchy.

Administration after

administration consciously chose to deny to the peoples of the third world the right of
national self determination.

Over and over again, the United States installed and

buttressed repressive regimes that consciously sought better ways to imprison, torture,
and murder their own people. And so the United States gave generals and colonels and
juntas and other strongmen what they needed so they could do just that. The United
States did so repeatedly because successive presidents and the people who served with
them did not believe that the people in underdeveloped countries could be trusted not to
fall prey to the blandishments of Communist subversion. Like children, they had to be
protected from themselves.

320

True, the level of overt paternalism in U.S. foreign policy has moderated with
time. By the end of World War II the rigid racial demarcations in American society had
begun to fray, and the continued attacks on racial segregation in the United States
ushered in a process of haphazard and intermittent reconciliation. Some have even
argued that only in the midst of the cold war did international embarrassment over racial
segregation pave the way for integration. In turn, the level of overt paternalism has
diminished in the United States; so, too, has it waned in the conduct of United States
foreign policy. Increasingly, in the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, debate in the
United States has confronted the cold war legacy of supporting dictators. But the peoples
of the world paid a terrible price for American economic and political security. And it
was a price they did not have to pay. In July of 1960, the preeminent architect of
American counterinsurgency tactics, Maj. General Edward Lansdale, chastised the
Eisenhower administration for installing embargoes on sugar, which seem to ignore the
Cuban people and the responsive feelings for them in Latin America when these Cuban
people are hurt by our actions. General Lansdale argued that the United States should
have attacked the Communists for betraying the ideals of the 26 of July Movement, for
in so doing, we would be making use of our own political base, from our Declaration
of Independence and Bill of Rights, which is still the most powerful method of operating
politically in the world. Instead, as General Lansdale pointed out, the only reason we
ever lose ground in the cold war is that we ignore our most potent instrument for waging
it. The U.S. Army School of the Americas served a different purpose. While the school
has held a decidedly minor place in U.S. military policy toward Latin America, its
321

existence reflects a defense posture that deliberately and consciously supported a

succession of vicious men that the United States generally believed would promote U.S.
interests.222

222

Maj. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale (Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense) to Waldemar A.
Nielsen (Exec. Dir. The Presidents Committee on Information Activities Abroad), memorandum, 8 July
1960, Latin America, Sprague Comm., Box 3, FN Latin America #12 (4), 1-2. Eisenhower Presidential
Library.

322

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Vita
David Marcus Lauderback was born in Reno, Nevada on May 29, 1963, the son
of Delaney Eckles Lauderback and Stephanie Anne Riegel.

He was raised in San

Francisco, California and completed work at Westmoor High School in 1981.

He

thereupon entered San Diego State University and received a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal
Arts and Sciences, with honors, in 1986. During the following years he was employed as
a research associate at the Institute for Scientific Analysis in San Francisco, California.
He joined Laura Di Pasquale in marriage in 1992. He entered The Graduate School at the
University of Texas at Austin in 1994. The University of Texas at Austin awarded David
Marcus Lauderback the Masters of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences in May 1996.

Permanent Address:

2003 Peach Tree Street

Austin, Texas 78704

This dissertation was typed by the author.

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